'Ant-Man' Gets an Official Release Date and the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase 3 Begins to Take Shape

While Marvel kind of announced that Ant-Man would be making the jump to the big screen at Comic-Con this summer, the studio made it official on Monday: Ant-Man, directed by Edgar Wright, will hit theaters on Nov. 6, 2015. Yeah, that's kind of a long ways a way (I'll be 30 when Ant-Man is released), but this means that The Avengers 2 won't be the only Marvel Cinematic Universe movie we get in 2015.

It's pretty impressive that Marvel is already planning Phase 3 of its Cinematic Universe at a time when not a single movie from Phase 2 has been released yet. We still have Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Solider, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers 2 before we even get to Ant-Man. Compare this to DC and Warner Bros. who, with the end of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy, have no idea what their next move is. A Batman reboot? A Justice League movie then individual films? Who knows. They don't.

With Joss Whedon now in charge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will Ant-Man be the movie that finally gets Nathan Fillion into the MCU? I mean, Fillion is totally Henry Pym, right?

Also, if I had to guess, we're going to see fewer sequels and more original movies in Phase 3. With Ant-Man kicking the round off, will it be followed by Black Panther and Dr. Strange movies? If these characters aren't introduced in The Avengers 2, they should definitely be next in line after Ant-Man. I'd be shocked if an Iron Man 4 is part of Phase 3.