How ‘Ant-Man’ star Corey Stoll rejoined the franchise as MODOK

“In the first movie, when we killed Yellowjacket, I remember Corey saying, ‘Oh man, do we have to kill him? That means I will never be in anything else! and I thought, ‘This is the logical conclusion of the story, but…'” Reed said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “The MODs were waiting in the wings. There are some Marvel movies where it was like, “Can we include MODOK?” I felt like I had an organic way of coming up with bringing him into this story and reusing Corey Stoll’s character, Darren Cross.”

As with other characters in the Marvel universe, there are many different MODS. In 2021, Hulu released a single season of the stop-motion animated series MODOK, starring Patton Oswalt as George Tarleton, another Marvel bad guy who, yes, becomes a giant floating evil head. Other versions of MODOK have been included in Marvel movies (including “Iron Man” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”), but Stoll’s item is the first to actually appear in an MCU movie.

The day I called Corey to say, ‘Hey, listen, this is what we want to do. You know the character MODOK, the mechanized organization designed only to kill?’” Reed recalled. “What you don’t know about Corey is that he’s a comic book nerd.” He knew immediately and started giggling. And I said, ‘What if it’s a yellow jacket no he died and shrunk and went to the Quantum Realm and was saved? Corey giggled throughout the call. He says “I’m in, I’m in, let’s do it!” He hugged her. Corey jumped at the chance to not only revive it, but in the weirdest way imaginable.”

“Ant-Man”

For Reed, reuniting with Stoll and finding a way to finally bring MODOK into the movies was appealing, but also the emotional element of bringing young Cassie Lang (now played by Kathryn Newton) to confront the terrifying bad guy, who tried to kill him. all those years ago.

“The idea of ​​kind of rethinking the origins of MODOK has taken off a lot, and I love it,” said Reed. “I like the idea of ​​Corey playing another version. In fact, this also contributes to Cassie Lang’s trauma. This guy came into her bedroom when she was six and tried to kill her, and now she’s 18 and facing a more grotesque version of the same guy. I liked the idea that this is part of what Cassie as an adult hero has to deal with now.