I was wondering.
The Ant-Man corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will continue to be Peyton Reed’s Place. The director, who helmed 2015’s Ant-Man and 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, has signed on to helm a third Ant-Man movie, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
Via Geektyrant.
It wasn’t on the list Disney was putting out for future MCU releases, but the Ant-Man movies are earners. Not fantastic earners, by Marvel standards. Still, bringing in 500 to 600 million bucks of revenue on relatively lower budgets is nothing to sneeze at, especially since the series is fun and kid-friendly.
Heh. Back when ANT-MAN AND THE WASP came out I more or less assumed that they wouldn’t make a third one, because it wasn’t a mega-earner; but it occurs to me now that there’s not a chance in Hell that the next phase of the MCU are going to duplicate ENDGAME‘s box office. They may actually need this franchise to keep on truckin’, in other words. Which I don’t mind, because I like the Ant-Man franchise. It has fun, and likes it when you’re laughing.
Moe Lane
True.
Most of the MCU franchises are pretty much dead at this point. There’s still Guardians of the Galaxy. And there’s Ant-Man. Both have managed to do well *twice*. The rest? Well..
The actors for Tony Stark and Steve Rogers have both repeatedly stated over the years that they want to move on. Hulk is in a weird rights limbo, iirc. And it wasn’t in the higher end of things to begin with, earnings-wise. The last Thor movie pretty much destroyed *that* setting. And the first two Thor movies were generally considered among the not so good part of the MCU list.
Black Panther and Captain Marvel have done well on their respective first outings (note – I still haven’t seen the latter). But they haven’t set a pattern in place yet, and could still suffer the usual sequel curse.
So, yeah, Ant-Man 3 is a very smart move.
Plus, the series fills a niche. Guardians of the Galaxy gets closer to that niche than any of the other movies. But it’s a niche that still distinctly belongs firmly to Ant-Man.
Having not seen the ending of the first phase yet .. yes, yes, I am very behind, bite me ..
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‘Guardians’ struggled in its’ second act, and both killing off Yondu and dumping Star Lord’s special abilities make it .. tricky to move forward.
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IF there’s a ‘Guardians 3’ I will see it in the theater, of course, but .. I will also wait for Moe’s review.
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Ant Man is both less expensive and .. has hit the ‘successful spectrum’ (if not crushed it) twice.
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It’s also ‘see in the theater’ .. but could happen before Moe’s review. (unlikely .. see first para.)
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Between Black Panther and Captain Marvel .. I would think a stand-alone Black Panther would be .. marginally easier .. than dropping Captain Marvel back into the 1990s again ..
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I’m also not sure an ‘events at the far edges of the galaxy’ tale for her works as well as it does for ‘Guardians’ .. and *that* said .. if “Guardians 3” *is* “Captain Marvel 2” (in the same way “Thor: Ragnarok” was both Thor 3 and Hulk 2) then .. we’ll see.
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Mew
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p.s. Deadpool lurks.
p.p.s. is ‘Doctor Strange 2’ still green-lit? ‘s another that cleared the bar of nice-profit but has yet to try the well again.
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Of course, some folks (mostly females of a certain age) will line up to see Benedict Cummerbund read the phone book, so …
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Mew
It’s green-lit, it’s announced, it’s likely filming next year, and it’s gonna be horror. They’re going to tie in Scarlet Witch, at the absolute least. I think that they want to do it, because they want to take a stab at a scary superhero flick.
Disney being Disney .. and with some obvious bleed-thrus ..
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Dr. Strange and Scarlet Witch as the horror side of superheroes…
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Black Panther and Captain Marvel as the ‘opening new fanbase’ superheroes .. (although Wonder Woman would be better here ..)
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Star Lord and crew as the ‘buddy movie’ / ‘grey hat’ (chaotic good?) superheroes …
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That leaves Ant Man as the ‘introducing young fan base’ superhero…
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.. and *that* leaves Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Spider Man, etc. in the Disney vault until another generation of actors are ready.
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Mew
You’re not the only one that’s behind. I’ve seen Infinity War but still haven’t gotten around to seeing Endgame.
As I told my students…oh, man, you’re going to cry so hard when The Flash dies.
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(Only a few of them got the joke. It makes me weep for the future.)
Endgame ended with an unexpected addition to the crew that makes me think that Guardians 3 will at least be fun. Whether or not it’s actually good will, of course, depend on the writing.
Having seen Endgame, I actually think a third Guardians movie will be pretty easy to do. They have a goal, and they have a new roster.
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And I don’t think a Captain Marvel sequel would stay in the 90s. I think It would come forward to today, and take advantage of the Rambeau kid having grown up. But if I’m wrong about that, I won’t care. Because I also don’t think I’m going to see it.
Yeah, Disney needing to start up a lot of new MCU franchises, it makes a lot of sense to green light sequels for pretty much all of the OG crew still willing to make more movies. If for no other reason, to preserve a sense of continuity with what’s gone before.
There are still some scrapings clinging to the bottom of the barrel.
Alpha Flight, Fantastic Four, Power Man and Iron Fist, Prince Namor, Spider Woman, She-Hulk, Black Cat, a decent Daredevil movie, ROM, Moon Knight…
(I know they’ve done TV shows about Iron Fist and Luke Cage, but I’m talking about when they were mercenary superheroes.)
IIRC, Rom was a tie-in with a toy line. There might be complications with that one.
Moon Knight could be interesting depending on how mentally unstable they want to make Marc Spectre. Given that they will want to avoid “Batman in white!” accusations, I’m guessing that they’d make it at least semi-prominent to the character.
Maybe we could get Wonder Man, a self obsessed actor who is only interested in his brand.
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Or go through an interminable story line where Hawkeye’s wife is brutalized by an old cowboy, then kills him, then we spend the next 50 issues with her trying to keep it from Hawkeye.
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Amazing what you remember from West Coast Avengers from *cough* 25 years ago.
Moon Knight and She Hulk are already some of the Disney+ shows that they’re doing.
The Fantastic Four are not scrapings. They’re the first family of Marvel. Granted, they haven’t been done right yet…
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And there’s less on the underside of the barrel than you think, thanks to Netflix. After 39 episodes of Daredevil (plus the character’s appearance in The Defenders), I doubt they’re going to do a movie. And as you said, there have already been Luke Cage and Iron Fist shows, one of which featured a kind of team-up. That’s probably the most we are going to get.
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Plus, any future appearances by the characters from the Netflix side of the MCU would probably mean cutting in Netflix on profits. I doubt Disney wants to do that. So the wall that allowed those characters in the series to be more “adult“ is now the thing that’s going to kill them from participating in future adventures.
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Thank goodness the X-Men are back, am I right?
What? Nobody’s going to suggest Multiple Man: The Movie?
Just think of all the money you’d save on casting!
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My opinion, is that the MCU has wrapped up.
Enjoy the cash stream from the residuals, make a movie every year or two to keep the genre alive.
But it would be very easy to jump the shark, or oversaturate the market, and kill the golden egg laying goose.
It’s a time for careful retrenchment.
New characters need to be established as the face of the franchise. (And doing so without alienating your core audience is quite important.)
It’s also a problem for Marvel, in that contractual delegation of IP makes a lot of their characters and storylines off limits. And introducing new ones has been… Commercially unsuccessful, even as low volume comic books. (Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wouldn’t be invited to write for the modern Marvel. Not even a zombie crossover event.)
The rights are *almost* consolidated. Sony has Spider-Man and his friends (including *some* of the Spider-Women). Columbia (I think) has Hulk. But everything else is back with Marvel, and thus Disney. That includes the mutants and the Fantastic Four.
They’re working on getting new characters in. Dr. Strange and Black Panther are two of them. Captain Marvel is supposed to be the new face now that Iron Man and Captain America are gone. The mutants are just waiting for a movie event that explains how the super heroes have never heard of the mutants, and vice versa.
They ordinarily only release 2-3 movies a year. It sometimes feels like more, but they’ve been pretty good about sticking to that. We’ve got an unusually long gap between Endgame and whatever comes next. But we still got two movies, which fits right in with the pattern.
How about Multiple Man: The Sitcom? It would take the “getting mistaken for someone else” trope to the ultimate level.
Tangentially related…
If you’ve never read Michael Stackpole’s “In Hero Years… I’m Dead!” I highly recommend it.
In my opinion, it is the best superhero novel ever written.
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I mention this because it’s also a masterclass in how to breathe new life into a Supers setting while maintaining continuity.
I was concerned when it turned toward being another deconstruction of the genre, but then it became a triumphant reconstruction. The plot is brilliant. The original characters great (plus interesting and thoughtful twists on a whole series of Captain Ersatz versions of familiar characters). The emotional beats are well-timed and have real impact. The setting is pure “why didnt I think of that?” gold.
This makes me happy. The Ant-Man movies have been the comfort food of MCU movies for me. I think they can do another sequel and it will not suck.