Even though “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” only released in cinemas the other week, the film’s director Peyton Reed is already considering where a fourth film could go.
Speaking with Yahoo! Entertainment UK recently, Reed has already developed a pitch for the next entry indicating any fourth “Ant-Man” film would need to pull back on the film’s scale and go back to the grounded roots of the character.
This makes sense as the new film’s “Avengers”-style wild Quantum Realm shenanigans is seemingly a world away from the previous two films. In fact, part of the appeal of the “Ant-Man” films have been their smaller scale and more standalone nature from the MCU.
Reed tells the outlet that as much as it was “really fun to create the Quantum Realm and all these sorts of characters,” the core heart of the franchise shouldn’t be forgotten in the process:
“I think you’d have to [go smaller]… I also think that you can’t lose sight of those family dynamics and the idea of this ‘street-level’ quality of Ant-Man, of the Wasp, in the first couple of movies.
But the family dynamics, no matter where they are, that’s the key thing. And particularly, I think that Scott-Cassie relationship. I like the idea of certainly Cassie becoming a big part of the MCU ongoing. I think there’s a lot more story to tell with these characters.
This one [Quantumania], I was treating it like a trilogy; as if this were the last one. You can never presume you’re gonna get to make another one. But I think there’s a lot of story to be told with these characters. So we’ll see.”
The comments follow on from producer Steven Broussard who previously told Movieweb that work on “Ant-Man 4” has already started behind the scenes:
“We’re already thinking about it. It’s like, every movie’s its own battle and you bear the scars of making it and wanting to make it great. But hope springs eternal and you start to put yourself back together after the journey of making the movie.
You’re like, ‘Yeah, what if we did X and what if we did Y?’ Like the wheels start turning, you can’t help yourself. I don’t want to say anything about specifically what those are, but yeah, you can’t help yourself. Those conversations, those whispers have already started to happen between myself and Peyton and Kevin.”
The third “Ant-Man” dropped 69.7% in North American theaters in its second weekend at the box-office with a $32.2 million haul – the worst second weekend drop-off to date for an MCU feature and on par with “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” as the biggest drop for a superhero movie that opened to above $100 million.
