Highlights From EW’s Marvel Coverage: Phase Two Concept Art, ANT-MAN Update, & Ghost Rider Film Rights Revert To Disney/Marvel

With Iron Man 3 covering this week’s Entertainment Weekly, the magazine features a massive preview for Marvel Studios’ Phase Two and beyond. We have a new still from Thor: The Dark World, concept art for Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians Of The Galaxy, an update on Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man film, confirmation of two new characters in Joss Whedon’s script for The Avengers 2, and Ghost Rider has officially reverted back to Marvel from Sony Pictures. Check out highlights of EW’s coverage below.

*Sources confirm to Entertainment Weekly that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, the children of X-Men‘s Magneto, are in Joss Whedon’s script for The Avengers 2. However, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige refuses to confirm or deny this, but he teases shifts in the main roster and confirms that the six original members from the first film – Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye – will all be featured. “All of the Avengers from the first film will be back and they will be the core team, but what’s fun is that the roster shifts. It was always the intention to have a story line that brought in, obviously, new bad guys and potentially new heroes. I’m not confirming nor denying [Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver], but the draft could change six months from now. If we’re going to add new characters, there’s going to be a major part of the movie.”

*Feige also talks about the cast for Guardians Of The Galaxy and confirms Zoe Saldana’s role as Gamora, stating that he thinks that “audiences will respond to an alien Zoë Saldaña – because they did respond to that one time before [with Avatar].” He also had this to say about casting Chris Pratt in the lead role of Peter Quill/Star-Lord. “He’s a hilariously frumpy, doofy guy in Parks and Rec, and he’s an incredibly kickass ripped guy in Zero Dark Thirty and that’s pretty awesome. He’s going to need that in Guardians. That’s a big range right there. We did a lot of auditions, a lot of screen tests, just as we did for Thor, just as we did for Cap. [Pratt] was hilarious, he was moving, he was … you bought him in the early versions of the outfit.” Finally, Feige comments on casting Dave Bautista as Drax The Destroyer. “One of the reasons Bautista got the part was because his banter, and ad libs, and screen tests with Pratt were awesome.”

*Feige then offers an update on the long in-development Ant-Man film, saying that casting will begin at the end of the year once the script is rewritten. “Frankly, now we have to re-write it to put it a little bit more into the [Marvel Cinematic Universe] because it was written before it existed. … But towards the end of this year, we’ll buckle down and start casting and start refining the script, which is great and which is very Edgar. He has done a great job being incredibly true to the comics but is putting his own spin on it, so we’ll be drawing on multiple mythologies for this one.”

*Perhaps this news could be most exciting of all: The film rights for Ghost Rider have officially gone back to Marvel. After two mediocre films starring Nicolas Cage, the Spirit of Vengeance is now free to be used in the MCU. However, Feige doesn’t sound like he’s in a hurry to see recently reverted characters again anytime soon. “Whenever a character comes back to us, it’s usually because the other studios don’t want to make the movies anymore — and that usually means the [previous] movies may not have been particularly well received. They all have potential, but we’re not going to say, ‘We got it back — make it!'”