Credit: Marvel StudiosOne character’s journey in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) nearly looked very different.
Responses to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania have been tepid, to say the least. Derided by critics and Marvel fans alike, the first movie in Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has suffered at the box office – expected to close out with less than $475 million, making it the worst-performing entry in the Ant-Man franchise.
The film follows Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) as he and his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) find themselves in the Quantum Realm with Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). There they face the exiled Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) and try to prevent his escape.
It seems a lot of Quantumania‘s plot was up in the air until as close as months before its release. Fans first started fearing it would flop after Paul Rudd was spotted filming reshoots in January. Details have since emerged that entire plotlines were shifted around or cut, such as Hope having a child and Janet boasting Quantum powers that test audiences deemed “confusing.”
Now we’re hearing that another character’s storyline underwent big changes. In an interview with Backstory Magazine, Quantumania writer Jeff Loveness revealed that the original plan was to kill off Hank Pym.
We were going to kill Hank at one point, and I was going to have him be, like, reanimated. His consciousness was going to live on through the ants, and he was going to be, like, mentally controlling them. Yeah, he was going to be almost like this hive mind of the ants, and I like that… That didn’t go too far.
Loveness didn’t reveal the reason behind the change of plans. However, it’s hard to imagine it was down to intervention from Hank Pym actor Michael Douglas. He recently said that he’d be up for another Ant-Man film, just so long as Hank gets to die.
Considering Quantumania‘s performance, a fourth Ant-Man installment seems like a big ask right now. However, if it does manage to pull off a Thor: The Dark World (2013) to Thor: Ragnarok (2017) style comeback, fingers crossed that we get to see a scene as bonkers as a ghostly Hank Pym controlling an ant army.