Paul Rudd reportedly lands lead role of Hank Pym in 'Ant-Man' Movie

Despite his protests to the contrary, multiple sites reported Wednesday night that Anchorman 2 actor Paul Rudd is in early negotiations to play Dr. Hank Pym, the titular superhero in Edgar Wright's Ant-Man movie in 2015.

Both TheWrap and Variety have reported through multiple sources that Rudd is in talks to star in the movie. Representatives for Marvel and for Rudd declined to comment in the aforementioned articles.

In the past week, Rudd had twice denied the rumors that he would be in the Marvel movie. Rudd and Steve Carell gave an interview to Total Film to promote Anchorman: The Legend Continues, aka Anchorman 2, and interviewer Matthew Leyland asked Rudd about the rumors.

"There's nothing that I know about. Those are all those rumors," Rudd replied. "I saw them when you saw them, so it was certainly exciting to be included in a rumor. That was pretty cool."

Leyland then asked Rudd if he would be excited to play a superhero.

"I think, depending on the superhero, I would be just as excited about that as I would be anything else, if it was kind of a cool part with an interesting take on stuff," Rudd said.

Steve Carell then jokes that he would like to play Ant-Man and wants to get the rumor started immediately.

Last week, Absolute Radio caught up with Rudd on the red carpet fo rAnchorman: The Legend Continues and asked him about Ant-Man.

"Oh, that's all rumor, man," Rudd said. The interviewer then asked if there's nothing he could tell him and Rudd replied, "There's nothing I know. Sorry."

Rudd's name first surfaced around the same time as Joseph Gordon-Levitt's in October and he was reportedly the frontrunner for the role as of a few weeks ago.