Will Michael Douglas Reprise His 'Ant-Man' Role? It's Looking Good

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In a movie career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Michael Douglas has always had a great big-screen batting average, winning his first Oscar at the age of 31 for producing 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. As an actor, he became part of the cultural zeitgeist in the ‘80s and '90s, starring in a string of hit movies, including Romancing the Stone, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, and, of course, the 1987 drama Wall Street, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. But even this 71-year-old showbiz veteran — a guy who’s seen it all — was surprised by the success of Ant-Man, his first Marvel movie, and a film that earned nearly $520 million worldwide. “You look at numbers like this – [they’re] off the charts,” he recently told Yahoo Movies. “It’s nothing you can really relate to in your own life. [It’s interesting] to see how these machines work.”

In the film, Douglas plays Dr. Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man who’s long retired from the superhero biz, and who’s now ready to hand off his incredible shrinking suit to a younger predecessor, played by Paul Rudd. Evangeline Lily plays Pym’s daughter, Hope, who sits on the board of his company — and who’s clearly inherited her father’s superhero skills, having transformed by the film’s end into the Wasp.

Thanks to the film’s success, Ant-Man and the Wasp, is already in the works by director Peyton Reed, and set to open July 6, 2018. Will Douglas be back for the sequel? “They’re in negotiations,” he said. “I’m hoping it will all workout. I hope to be a part of it all, yeah.” That said, he’s fine with not strapping on a costume himself: “Not unless they twisted his arm,“ the actor said, adding, "Hopefully, [Hank]’s going to be able to sit and control everything in the control room. That would be ideal.”

Read More: 'Ant-Man’ Director Peyton Reed Talks Sequel, 'Fantastic Four’ Failures

If he does return, Douglas will likely have to spend more time in front of a green screen — something he hadn’t done until he began filming Ant-Man last year. “[It’s] not by choice, but my entire career has [consisted of] contemporary movies,” he said. “So I haven’t been into the future or the past [or worked much with] special effects. I loved it. It was fascinating, because you had no idea what the hell the movie was going to be until you sat in the movie theater and saw it.”

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Part of those special effects involved making Douglas look decades younger, thanks to a procedure known as “visual cosmetics” (seen in the above photo). While audience members might have assumed they were seeing manipulated footage from one of the actor’s earlier films, it was really Douglas’ current-day, CGI-enhanced self. "You sit there, and they put a lot of dots on your face, and you go in and do a scene,” he said. “Then you can see it in the theater and you’re 30, 40 years younger. I laughed when I saw it. If they did it with my body, too, I’d be very happy!”

During his downtime on the Ant-Man set, Douglas could be found either shooting the breeze with its comic creator Stan Lee — whom Douglas considers “inspirational” — or taking in the project’s unparalleled four units of production, which worked simultaneously (one group handled live-action shots; a second handled stunt scenes; another handled green-screen effects; and the fourth team worked on the film’s shrinking sequences). “I was like a kid in a zoo that I’d never been to before,” said Douglas.

Up next for the actor is the action thriller Unlocked, with Noomi Rapace, Toni Collette, and Orlando Bloom (Douglas is mum on plot details, but acknowledges he plays the bad guy). But nowadays, he says, it takes a special gig to pull him away from his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and their two children (he also stays busy with his production company, Stonebridge Entertainment, and his work with the U.N. to eliminate nuclear weapons). We’re still hoping Douglas can find time for another role on par with his 2014 Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning part as Liberace in Behind the Candelabra — and it sounds like the actor is hoping for one, too. “A lot of the stuff I do is out of the box and kind of quirky and not mainline,” he said. “But I haven’t had a chance to do something quite as colorful as [Candleabra] for a while.”

Ant-Man, which is colorful in its own right, is now available on digital HD, and arrives on Blu-ray on Dec. 8.

(Photos: AP/Dan Balilty, Marvel)