UPDATE: Swank-mo-tron just told me he interviewed Edgar Wright at SDCC, and that he has indeed finished a script for the movie — in fact, it’s been done since before Iron Man 2. All that is left (aside from his duties in promoting The World’s End) is to tailer it to what will take place in Marvel Stage 2 before going ahead full steam on the project. Despite that, though, I still stand firmly behind my conclusion below.
Twitter has been abuzz ever since Simon Pegg uploaded the following picture to his account:
As you can see, not only is he posing in front of the character, he is also discreetly pointing at him as well, and due to this, everyone and their brother is claiming that he has secretly signed on to play the character.
I call BS.
First, EVEN if Edgar Wright was already in the casting phase of his movie (which wouldn’t make sense since it’s at least 3 years away), and he did decide to have Simon Pegg play Hank Pym, don’t you think they would be under Non-Disclosure Agreements from hell that would prohibit them from even giving us an inkling of what was going on? This isn’t like Vin Diesel and Groot; we’re talking about a movie that most likely doesn’t even have a script yet, so revealing something as big as who is going to be the main character this early on is highly unlikely.
There’s also the fact that Simon Pegg has discredited this rumor as well, stating on Twitter:
FFS the Internet, all I did was point at the central character in my dear friend’s next movie, because I’m excited for him. #iamantman
Oh wait, I fucked up that hashtag. It was supposed to be #iamnotantman
It’s safe to say that all anyone is doing right now is reading way too much into a picture that was designed to push people’s buttons, and they are just looking for subtext where there is none.
Could Simon Pegg eventually be cast as that character? Of course, and that would be cool, but a Twitter post is hardly the evidence needed to jump to that conclusion.