It’s an especially exciting time to be a Marvel fan. Over a decade, the universe has expanded into massive cinematic achievement of world-building and with the upcoming Phase Four coming next year. But it seems like Marvel forgot about the little guy along the way? There’s been no word about the development of an Ant-Man 3! When Michelle Pfeiffer was recently asked about her interest in returning to play Janet Van Dyne at the Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Los Angeles premiere, here’s what she said:
It’s possible. If there is one.
Is this enough to get us to quit buggin’ about the unknown fate of a third Ant-Man? “It’s possible?” For fans of Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang and his family of Pym Particle pushers, it was disheartening to see Ant-Man absent from the Phase Four lineup. When Kevin Feige presented upcoming projects at summer conventions San Diego Comic Con and Anaheim’s D23, he teased a bunch of movies and television series from the MCU, but an Ant-Man 3 was not name dropped.
Phase Four will see the return of Avengers such as Black Widow, Falcon, Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Loki, Hawkeye, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and Thor and the introduction of the Eternals and Shang-Chi. We also know Phase Five is likely to bring fans Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Captain Marvel 2, Blade, along with confirmed Black Panther 2 release. Can Ant-Man 3 squeeze in too? Check out what Paul Rudd said over summer:
I don’t know. You need to make a call to the top brass and start a campaign to make it happen.
Before we storm Marvel by word of Paul Rudd, it should be noted that Ant-Man and the Wasp came out only last year and his character had a major role in Avengers: Endgame. Without the Pym Particles, the Avengers could not have traveled back in time and retreived the Infinity Stones. At this point, it makes sense for Marvel to put the franchise on the back burner for the time being and let other corners of the universe expand.
Michelle Pfeiffer’s words to Variety are open ended, probably because she doesn’t know anything about the project. Marvel loves to keep their actors in the dark. Michael Douglas updated fans early this year, saying there have been talk of another film but ‘nothing formal’ from his knowledge. He also said this:
They always kind of spring it on me. The first time you hear about it, it's already in its third rewrite.
The Ant-Man have performed on the low end of the spectrum as far as Marvel blockbusters go. With that said, Ant-Man and the Wasp made $622 million worldwide and made the top 10 highest-grossing movies of 2018.
Hopefully there’s hope for the Ant-Man franchise to continue! Michelle Pfieffer is starring next as Queen Ingrith in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, in theaters on October 18.
