Michael Douglas Asked To Be Killed Off Marvel’s ‘Ant-Man’: “They Wouldn’t Let Me”

If Michael Douglas had his way, he would’ve left the Marvel Cinematic Universe after starring in 2015’s Ant-Man and its sequel.

In a new interview, the actor got real about his time in the MCU and asked the studio to kill off his character.

“I would have been killed off after the second one, but they wouldn’t let me,” Douglas said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.

Douglas shared that he wanted to star in a CGI-heavy film, adding, “I said, ‘I’ve never done a green screen movie.’ I [told] all my agents, ‘I’d like to do one of these green screen movies to see what they’re like,’ you know? Because it’s amazing. It’s nothing, just a green screen, and they show you the pictures of what it’s gonna look like when it’s all finished.”

After starring in the MCU, Douglas said, “It’s hard acting, man,” adding, “It’s coming at you here, this and that, you know.”

Douglas joked about reading the “fine print” of his contract, saying that Ant-Man star Paul Rudd “was a wonderful actor” and the cast was “a lovely group,” noting, “but then you can’t get out of it.”

After starring in Ant-Man in 2015 as Hank Pym, Douglas would reprise the role on several other occasions. Douglas reprised his role in 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, and 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. He also voiced the character in several episodes of the Disney+ animated series What If…?, between 2021 and 2023.