Marvel’s highly-anticipated Ant-Man 3 opened up to sub-par reviews and disappointing box office numbers in February, barely coming close to the $500 million mark in the global circuit. A fruitless venture helmed by Peyton Reed, the superhero film fell awfully short of fans’ expectations, leaving a haphazard trail of poor writing, botched editing, and an unforgiving lack of character development in its wake. Simply put, it was a shocking Marvel flop if there ever was one.
And as if being a catastrophe at the box office wasn’t enough, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania almost featured the death of a central character too, which the MCU fandom most likely wouldn’t have taken well. Fortunately enough, the writer didn’t take that risk which otherwise would’ve led to marring the film’s already horrid reputation even more.
Related: Ant-Man 3 Crashes at Box-Office Despite $100M Opening Weekend, Officially Considered Failure With Acting Powerhouse Jonathan Majors and Paul Rudd
Hank Pym Almost Died in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Michael Douglas, a renowned actor and film producer, who’d portrayed Hank Pym in the Ant-Man franchise, almost met his end in the third installment. Jeff Loveness, the writer behind Ant-Man 3, admitted that they’d initially been planning on killing the scientific genius in the movie with the perspective of reviving him in the form of a “hive mind of the ants.”
In a recent interview with Backstory Magazine, Loveness explained the whole idea behind the character’s death and how his consciousness would continue to “live on through the ants” after his demise, a vision which to his dismay, didn’t “go too far.”
“We were going to kill Hank at one point, and I was going to have him be, like, reanimated. His consciousness was going to live on through the ants, and he was going to be like, mentally controlling them. Yeah, he was going to be almost like this hive mind of the ants, and I like that… that didn’t go too far.”
While the notion might sound fancy in theory, the prospect of a “hive mind” Hank Pym probably wouldn’t have appealed to the fans the way the 34-year-old screenwriter might’ve expected to. But if it didn’t happen in the threequel, then it might just end up taking place in Ant-Man 4, if a fourth part ever makes it to the big screens.
Michael Douglas Would Come Back for Ant-Man 4 Only if Hank Pym Died
While there is no official word whether Ant-Man 4 is even happening, to begin with, Douglas, 78, claimed that he wouldn’t mind returning for a potential fourth installment on the sole condition that his character would die the film. Speaking to THR, the Academy Award winner said that he was up for another round “as long as [Hank Pym] could die.”
The plan of killing off Pym in Ant-Man 3 had originally been hatched to make way for Kang the Conqueror’s grand entrance in the movie, an MCU supervillain played by Jonathan Majors. But because they weren’t too keen on “copying the Thanos approach,” they scrapped the idea instead, which in the long run was probably the wisest choice.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania can be streamed on Disney+ from April 18, 2023.
Source: Backstory Magazine on YouTube
