The actor says he asked to be written out after the second Ant-Man film, but the studio would not let him go.
Oscar winner Michael Douglas says he asked Marvel to kill off his character, Hank Pym, and the studio would not let him go. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, host Josh Horowitz asked whether it was true that he wanted the character written out of the franchise. Douglas confirmed it. "I would have been killed off after the second one, but they wouldn't let me," he said.
Douglas debuted as Hank Pym in 2015's Ant-Man and returned for Ant-Man and the Wasp in 2018, Avengers: Endgame in 2019 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in 2023. EW counts four Marvel films in the role. He also voiced the character in several episodes of the Disney+ animated series What If…? between 2021 and 2023.
Douglas said he had never made a green screen movie and told his agents he wanted to try one, because the process looked amazing: the set is just a green screen, and they show you pictures of what it will look like when it is all finished. TheWrap reported that his interest in the Marvel films had nothing to do with comic books.
On the work itself, Douglas was blunt:
"It's hard acting, man. It's coming at you here, this and that, you know."
Douglas also joked about the contract he signed. Ant-Man co-star Paul Rudd, he said, "was a wonderful actor," and then came the catch: "you can't get out of it."
Douglas has told this story before. Variety reported that on The View in 2024, Douglas said he had asked Marvel to kill him off in the third standalone Ant-Man film, Quantumania. "[Getting killed off] actually was my request for the third one," he said then.
Entertainment Weekly said it had reached out to Marvel for comment.
No comments yet