Michael Douglas wanted out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel would not let him go. Asked on Josh Horowitz’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, as Variety reported, whether the stories about him wanting to be killed off were true, the Oscar winner said: “I would have been killed off after the second one, but they wouldn’t let me.”
Douglas first played Pym, the scientist who created the Ant-Man suit, in 2015’s “Ant-Man.” He came back for “Ant-Man and the Wasp” in 2018, “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019 and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” in 2023.
He Had A Death Scene In Mind
This is not the first time Douglas has talked about wanting a send-off. During a 2024 appearance on “The View,” he said he asked Marvel to kill Pym in “Quantumania” and even pitched how it could happen.
“I said I’d like to have a serious [death], with all these great special effects,” he said at the time. “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.”
That never happened. Pym made it out of the Quantum Realm alive at the end of “Quantumania,” along with Janet, Hope, Scott and Cassie. Douglas said on “The View” that he did not think he would show up for a fourth film.
Why He Signed On In The First Place
Douglas told Horowitz he joined Marvel because he had never made a green screen movie and wanted to know what it was like.
“I [told] all my agents, ‘I’d like to do one of these green screen movies to see what they’re like,’ you know? Because it’s amazing,” he said. “It’s nothing, just a green screen and they show you the pictures of what it’s gonna look like when it’s all finished.”
The work itself was harder. “It’s hard acting, man,” he said. “It’s coming at you here, this and that, you know.” He praised Paul Rudd as a wonderful actor and the cast as a lovely group. “But then you can’t get out of it,” he said.
Where That Leaves Hank Pym
Douglas said it publicly as early as 2023, telling The Hollywood Reporter at the “Quantumania” premiere that he would return for a fourth film “as long as I could die,” and he brought it up again on “The View” in 2024. Pym is still alive in the MCU. The full conversation is available wherever “Happy Sad Confused” streams.
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