Michael Douglas has a death wish. Or at least he does when it comes to his character Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man in the Marvel Studios “Ant-Man” films. The actor, now 79 years old, recently turned up on The View to promote his new series “Franklin,” and during his appearance, revealed that he wanted Pym to have an effects-heavy death scene in Peyton Reed’s third installment of the franchise “Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania.”
Douglas has spoken in the past about wanting his character to perish, and the actor clarified that he had hoped ‘Ant-Man 3’ would be his swan song.
“This actually was my request for the third one,” Douglas explained to The View about his MCU character request (via EW), although he ultimately survived the film. “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. 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’ comments seem to underscore recent rumors that “Ant-Man 3” would be the last film in the franchise for the foreseeable future, given Marvel was reportedly leaning towards sure-fire hits only and ‘Quantumania’ was seen as 2023’s first big miss for Marvel Studios.
On the red carpet for ‘Quantumania’ last year, Douglas told THR that he would return for a fourth film “as long as I could die.” At the time, Marvel executive Stephen Broussard said a fourth film was under consideration.
“We’re already thinking about it,” Broussard told Comic Book Movie in Feb 2023. “It’s like, every movie’s its own battle and you bear the scars of making it and wanting to make it great. But hope springs eternal, and you start to put yourself back together after the journey of making the movie. Those conversations, those whispers have already started to happen between myself and Peyton and Kevin [Feige].”
While an “Ant-Man 4” hasn’t been officially canceled, it was never technically greenlit either. In the last 12 months, following the disappointment of ‘Quantumania,’ and the outright bomb of “The Marvels,” Disney chief Bob Iger suggested that Marvel would scale back on production and stick with franchises with work, and shy away from ones that didn’t—comments that many took as sly references to those two 2023 titles. A few months later, Iger admitted some projects had been quietly canceled, so this may be where the ‘“Ant-Man 4’ is canned” rumors started.
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” certainly wasn’t a huge turkey; it grossed $476 million worldwide, and juxtaposed next to “The Marvels” flop, its numbers look relatively good. However, at the time, it was Marvel’s first big post-pandemic misfire, and it underperformed expectations at the time. How things have changed in just over a year. A Marvel movie grossing $106 million in its debut weekend would likely be considered a big win in our current era of fallow box office, but at the time, following the release of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which opened to $181 million just three months earlier, it was seen as an underwhelming figure.
Either way, Douglas probably won’t get his wish for now. Maybe he’ll have to wait to see if he’s enlisted in an ‘Avengers’ film for a final goodbye.