Michael Douglas had a request for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: He wanted his character to die.
The Oscar-winning actor stopped by The View on Thursday to promote his new Apple TV+ series, Franklin. During the conversation, he was asked about his comments to The Hollywood Reporter about wanting his character in the Ant-Man franchise, Hank Pym, to be killed off in the third film.
“This actually was my request for the third one,” Douglas explained of his desire for his character to die. “I said I’d like to have a serious [death], with all these great special effects. There’s got to be some fantastic way where I can shrink to an ant size and explode, whatever it is.
He continued, “I want to use all those effects. But, that was on the last one. Now, I don’t think I’m going to show up.”
Douglas spoke to THR on the red carpet for Quantumania in 2023. When asked if he would return for a fourth film if there was one, he had one condition: “as long as I could die.” In a separate interview with ComicBook.com, Marvel executive Stephen Broussard noted that conversations about a fourth film were already happening before it came out.
When it hit theaters, the film did better at the box office than the first two films in the franchise did. But it continued the trend of Marvel Cinematic Universe projects receiving a lower CinemaScore on opening weekend, following straight A’s for 21 films.
When speaking to THR at the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania premiere, Douglas also shared that he took comfort in reuniting with a lot of the castmembers from the first two films, like Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathryn Newton.
“Having the comfort factor of knowing each other, you don’t have to go through the formal introductions,” he said at the time. “You all know each other. It makes it very comfortable, and Peyton Reed being the same director. It was a nice experience.”
In the third installment of the Ant-Man franchise, Rudd’s Scott Lang must defeat Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conquerer, the most powerful villain in the MCU thus far who was introduced in Loki season one.
Quantumania was originally set to kick off the next phase of the MCU, leading up to the release of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. However, following Majors being found guilty in December of reckless assault in the third degree and guilty of harassment, Marvel dropped the actor.
The studio has two courses it could take after dropping Majors. It could recast the part of Kang or redevelop its plans for the next phase and work to find a new villain to center on. According to sources, there are indications that Marvel is taking the latter approach, as Loki creator Michael Waldron was hired in November to work on a new draft of a script for what is now being referred to as Avengers 5.
