ANT-MAN AND THE WASP
QUANTUMANIA

A THIRD ANT-MAN FILM AND A NEW VILLAIN

HOW QUANTUMANIA REACHED THE SCREEN

Peyton Reed signed on to direct a third Ant-Man film at the start of November 2019. Jeff Loveness was hired to write it and had begun work by April 2020, and Jonathan Majors was cast in September 2020. The title and Kathryn Newton’s casting were revealed at Disney’s Investor Day in December 2020. Kang is a variant of He Who Remains, who was introduced in the Loki Season 1 finale, and Marvel Studios decided to build the Multiverse Saga around Kang after seeing Majors’ work on Loki and in the dailies for this film.

Reed said the earlier films’ use of the Quantum Realm was “just dipping our toes into it.”

PINEWOOD, RUSHED EFFECTS AND A TIGHT CALENDAR

HOW THE FILM WAS MADE

Principal photography began on 26 July 2021 at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire under the working title Dust Bunny and finished in November 2021. Christophe Beck composed the score. The post-production period was cut by four and a half months, leading to at least ten visual-effects scenes being added at the last minute, and critical resources were diverted to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The net budget is given as $330.1 million, though other reported figures differ.

A FAMILY ADRIFT IN THE QUANTUM REALM

WHO IS IN THE CAST

Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang, with Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne, Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror, Kathryn Newton as Cassie Lang, Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet van Dyne, Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, Bill Murray as Lord Krylar, Corey Stoll as M.O.D.O.K., William Jackson Harper as Quaz, Katy O’Brian as Jentorra and David Dastmalchian as Veb.

A BIG OPENING AND A STEEP FALL

HOW THE FILM WAS RELEASED AND WHAT IT EARNED

The film premiered at the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles on 6 February 2023 and was released in the US and China on 17 February. It opened to $106,109,650 in the US and went on to earn $214,504,909 there and $476,071,180 worldwide. The second weekend fell 69%, the largest second-weekend drop of any MCU film at that time, and the result was a box-office disappointment.

There is a mid-credits scene in which variants of Kang plan a multiversal uprising, and a post-credits scene that reuses footage from the Loki Season 2 episode “1893.”

THE REWATCH

A 46% CRITICS SCORE AND A B FROM AUDIENCES

Rotten Tomatoes lists a 46% critics’ score from 414 reviews and an 81% audience score, and its consensus calls Kang “a thrilling villain poised to alter the course of the MCU.” Metacritic gives it 48 from 61 critics, and audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a B. Owen Gleiberman of Variety called it “at once fun and numbing,” while Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called it a “mid-tier MCU film, with decent enough battle sequences and some nifty visuals.” It received award nominations but no wins.

In the Marvel Marathon it sits in the MCU release order guide between The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It sits between Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in the MCU movies in order and Marvel movies in release order guides. In the MCU timeline guide it comes between The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.