Michael Douglas says he wanted his character killed off in a ‘fantastic way’ in ‘Quantumania’

Michael Douglas had one request for the third installment of Marvel’s Ant Man films – he wanted his character Hank Pym killed off in a “fantastic way”.

The Oscar-winning actor revealed his request to the makers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania when he appeared on The View to promote his new Apple TV+ historical drama series Franklin.

“[Getting killed off] actually was my request for the third one,” Douglas said.

“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”.

In 2023, at the Quantumania red carpet, Douglas told The Hollywood Reporter that he would return for a fourth film “as long as I could die”.

Marvel executive Stephen Broussard said in 2023 that discussions on a fourth film were already underway.

“We’re already thinking about it,” he said in an interview with ComicBook.com.

“Like the wheels start turning, you can’t help yourself. I don’t want to say anything about specifically what those are, but yeah, you can’t help yourself. Those conversations, those whispers have already started to happen between myself and Peyton [Reed] and Kevin [Feige]”.

While Hank Pym didn’t meet his “fantastic” death, the actor is not too keen to come back.

“Now, I don’t think I’m going to show up [for a fourth],” Douglas said on The View.

The Independent has reached out to a representative for Douglas for comment.

Douglas has played Hank Pym in all three Ant Man films, starting in 2015, also starring Paul Rudd as the titular Ant Man and Evangeline Lilly as Wasp, and also reprised his character in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

Quantumania was originally planned to launch Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, introducing Jonathan Majors’ character Kang the Conqueror as the new Thanos-esque adversary. However, after Majors was found guilty of assault and harassment in December 2023, he has been dropped from Marvel, leading to uncertainty around the next phase.