An Avengers-level threat requires a Avengersformat movie. After the small scale Ant man followed the massive Avengers: Age of Ultron to wrap up Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2015, the sequel – 2018’s smaller stakes Ant-Man and the Wasp — was released just months after the weighty Avengers: Infinite War. But no longer is the Ant man franchise what trilogy director Peyton Reed calls a “palate cleanser.” Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniain theaters February 17, the MCU kicks off Phase 5 and introduces the overarching villain of the Multiverse Saga: Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors).

“I was like, ‘You know what? Being a palate cleanser is great. It’s where you expect to be with a Ant man movie. But I don’t want to be a palate cleanser, I want to be the big one Avengers movie that follows someone else with a palate cleanser,” says Reed in the latest print issue of Total Movie Magazine. “And we all liked this idea. It felt like a natural organic growth for the Ant man movies… I really wanted to paint on a much bigger canvas for this movie.”

Paul Rudd, reprising his role as comedic ex-con Scott Lang, wanted the next one Ant man to undergo a third film reinvention like Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarokwho broke down Chris Hemsworth’s Asgardian God of Thunder before building him back up as a “recreate” of the character he had bored out playing.

“[We said] if we ever do any of these things again – which we didn’t know at the time whether or not we would do it – it would be nice to make a big move,” Rudd said. “I always thought that was one of the fun things Ragnarok. It was the third Thor movie, and it was completely different from the other two. And that was kind of one of his strengths. And I was excited, just like Peyton and [producer] Stephen [Broussard] also with the idea of ​​trying to make a bigger hit with a third.”

Like Ragnaroka drastically different interpretation than that of 2011 Thor and that of 2013 Thor: The Dark Worldsays Rudd Quantumania may be unrecognizable to audiences expecting yet another scaled-down adventure with little impact on the universe as a whole. In a post-Avengers: endgame world – where Scott’s daughter, Cassie (now played by Kathryn Newton), was five years old in a literal blink of an eye for Scott – it made sense to Ant man in a dark direction.

“I think we wanted to make a big old movie, and we wanted it to be visually striking and a huge story and a really serious villain,” Rudd said. “And we wanted people to get overwhelmed and walk out of there and say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that’s a Ant man movie.’ That was a goal. And I also think with everything Scott has been through, everything audiences have seen these characters go through so far, it asked for something of this magnitude. I think that was the right way to go.”

Quantumania acts as a sort of prequel to it Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (dated May 2, 2025) and Avengers: Secret Wars (May 1, 2026), who will assemble a new team of Earth’s mightiest heroes against the time lord Kang.

With Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathryn Newton, Bill Murray and Jonathan Major, Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in cinemas from February 17.