Marvel Unveils CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, THOR: THE DARK WORLD, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and ANT-MAN

Saturday’s Hall H panel for Marvel at Comic-Con was billed as Iron Man 3, but from previous experience we all knew to expect more goodies from Marvel Studios than just IM3.  We were right, as the studio announced full, intriguing titles for Thor 2 and Captain America 2, confirmed Guardians of the Galaxy (including which characters will appear), and revealed test footage for Ant-Man with a surprise appearance by Edgar Wright.

Hit the jump for my full recap of this “update” portion of the Marvel panel. [Update: We've updated the article with concept art for the Guardians of the Galaxy movie as well as logos for all the upcoming Marvel films]

Feige opened the panel by saying that they’re working on four movies in active development.  The first is Iron Man 3, hitting theaters on May 3rd, 2013.  He then went on to reveal titles for two previously known sequels, and confirmed another property that we’d heard rumblings of in the past few weeks.

• Iron Man 3 (May 3, 2013)
  
• Thor: The Dark World (November 8, 2013)
  
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier (April 4, 2014)
• Guardians of the Galaxy (August 1, 2014)

For fans of the comics, the subtitle “The Winter Soldier” should provide a hint as to where the Captain America sequel will go.  The title is a reference to a comics storyline that will find Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) taking an integral role.

Feige added that Zachary Levi has been confirmed as the character of Fandrel in the Thor sequel, and revealed the team that will be unleashed for Guardians of the Galaxy:

• StarLord
• Drax the Destroyer
• Rocket Raccoon
• Groot
• Gamora

In a fantastic surprise, Feige then introduced Edgar Wright to talk about Ant-Man.  Wright had been tweeting about being in London for the past few days in an effort to throw fans off, but he came out to a very warm reception.

• “I’m taking the Terrence Malick approach to superheroes,” said Wright referring to the long road of development on Ant-Man.
• Wright and Joe Cornish wrote two more drafts of the script last year, but they’ve been done for quite a while.

They then revealed test footage that Wright shot for Ant-Man, after Wright toyed for a bit with the audience saying they wouldn’t really want to see a clip of stuff with wires and blue screens in it.  It’s completely unfinished since they shot it two weeks ago, but they showed the footage anyway because Marvel absolutely owns Comic-Con.

The footage opened with Ant-Man sitting on a ledge in an air conditioning vent that lead to a hallway guarded by two agents.  The costume was pretty metallic looking, and he snuck through the vent hole and started running down the hallway.  He morphed to normal size, shocking the guards, then morphed back down to ant size and kept running.  Still in “ant size” he leapt up and punched one of the guys in the face, knocking the spit out of him, then he ran and attacked the other guard.

The footage was obviously rough, but I thought the big/small effects worked great.  Wright found a way to make Ant-Man’s power work in a cool and useful way on screen, while still allowing room for the playful tone that he does so well.  While I was hoping we’d see someone like Simon Pegg play the role just for fun in the test footage, the actor was wearing the Ant-Man helmet the entire time so we never saw his face.  The lights then came back up.

• “I’ve been doing one second of that for the last six years,” quipped Wright
• Wright confirmed that the costume seen in the test footage will most likely be what makes the final film.  He described it as a mix between the Silver Age and contemporary Ant-Man, adding “Ant-Man will kick your ass one inch at a time.”
• Wright said there’s no casting to announce, but “revealed” that Ant-Man has been here in Hall H all day, pulling out an Ant-Man title card and putting it on the table next to him.

Wright then left the stage to make way for the Iron Man 3 panel, but these bits of news from Marvel were met with wild applause from the audience.  Hit the comments to discuss the goings-on from today’s Marvel panel, and read Matt’s recap of Iron Man 3 right here. [Update: Simon Pegg tweeted that he, Nick Frost, and Wright start filming The World's End in 10 weeks, then Wright will film Ant-Man sometime next year.]

Catch up on all of our continuing Comic-Con coverage here.

Concept art and logos via Marvel.