Has Ant-Man 3 been lost to the Quantum Realm forever?
A source allegedly close to Marvel Studios is reporting that a three-quel for the tiny
Avenger isn't going to happen, and that Ant-Man and The Wasp may see their further adventures
relegated to the upcoming Disney+ streaming service.
The rumor comes courtesy of rumor monger Mikey Sutton, who points to two reasons in particular
for the decision to shrink Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne down from the big screen to
the small one.
First, Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige is said to be preoccupied with the task of
folding the X-Men and Fantastic Four, along with the other formerly Fox-owned properties
recently acquired by Marvel's parent company Disney, into the Marvel Cinematic Universe
— something he alluded to at San Diego Comic-Con 2019.
Second, Sutton claims that Feige is invested in exploring different genres with the MCU's
Phase 4 and Phase 5 offerings — from spy thrillers to psychological horror flicks and
everything in-between — so apparently, there simply won't be any room left on the slate
for more conventional superhero adventures.
We submit, however, that this is nothing new for the MCU, which has played in different
genres for years now …
"That's, uhh… naked.
Very naked."
"Huh.
That's… that's in my brain, now."
… but we digress.
Let's look at this rumor from a pure common sense standpoint.
The "Feige is just too busy" angle has been dragged out in one other recent situation:
as a pretty thin excuse on the part of Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra as to why his
studio and Disney couldn't re-up their agreement to share custody of Spider-Man.
You'll notice that it's not actually Feige complaining about how busy he is in either
circumstance; it's other parties putting those words in his mouth for him, which seems a
little bit suspect.
As we alluded to before, it also doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to advance the notion
that because Marvel wants to do some different things with some of its upcoming features
like the forthcoming Blade reboot legacy heroes and/or their feature franchises must be left
behind.
If that were the case, we certainly wouldn't be getting Thor: Love and Thunder, an unprecedented
fourth film for an original Avenger.
One could even make the argument that Ant-Man and his supporting characters were more important
to the MCU's overarching narrative through Phase 3 than virtually any others.
The Ant-Man films introduced the technology that made it possible for the Avengers to
travel through time and acquire all of the Infinity Stones before Thanos could; for that
matter, if Lang hadn't been freed from the Quantum Realm by the timely inter vention
of a mouse - the universe would be toast yes, that’s a mouse officially.
The Ant-Man flicks may be the lightest and breeziest of the MCU's franchises, but they've
been charged with doing a surprising amount of narrative heavy lifting and while they
haven't exactly blown up the box office, they haven't flopped, either, together totaling
over $1.1 billion dollars worldwide.
All of these points aside, it's worth considering that a couple of sources that we know to be
close to Marvel Studios namely, Paul Rudd and co-star Michael Douglas have made public
remarks indicating that Ant-Man 3 isn't off the table.
During a Television Critics' Association presser back in February, Douglas indicated that while
nothing has been formalized, there had absolutely been talks about Ant-Man 3, although he didn't
expect to hear whether it was actually going down until, quote, "its third rewrite."
As for Rudd, he's simply gone on record stating that he doesn't know when or if Ant-Man 3
will happen as recently as June, although it's possible that he knows more than he's
letting on.
So, will there be an Ant-Man 3?
The simple fact is that we don't know, but we have no compelling reason right now to
think there won't be.
The Ant-Man flicks have served a valuable purpose as fun, light palate cleansers in
between huge, universe-shaking events, and we think it's pretty likely that the MCU will
be in need of another one of those at some point.
Also, Mr. Feige, if you're watching this: please know that if fans never get the chance
to hear Lang's motor-mouthed buddy Luis recount the events of Avengers: Endgame in his own
inimitable fashion, you can expect about four million sternly worded emails.
"OK, sorry sorry…
I just — y'know, uhh…
I just get excited and stuff."
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