Compared to Marvel's billion-dollar blockbusters such as BLACK PANTHER, AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, CAPTAIN MARVEL, AVENGERS: ENDGAME, and SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME, the ANT-MAN films aren't nearly as impressive from a box-office standpoint, but as a fan of the first two movies, I was thrilled when the studio announced that the diminutive hero would be back for another solo adventure.
The third installment of the ANT-MAN franchise will be penned by Jeff Loveness (Rick & Morty) with Peyton Reed once again returning to the director's chair, and Reed recently dropped a small tease on the new film while speaking on SiriusXM. The director said that they're working away amidst the pandemic and have some really exciting things in store, before teasing that the "third Ant-Man movie is going to be a much bigger, more sprawling movie than the first two. It's going to have a very different visual template. That's all i will say." When compared to the majority of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, neither ANT-MAN nor ANT-MAN AND THE WASP were particularity huge globe-trotting adventures (part of what I like about them), but it stands to reason that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) are ready for a bigger mission following the events of AVENGERS: ENDGAME.
Speaking of The Wasp, the character shared equal billing with Ant-Man in the first sequel, and Peyton Reed recently told Yahoo that their partnership will continue into the third film. "They’re a partnership, and she’s a very, very important part of that," said Reed. "And that was a very gratifying thing, I guess technically we were the first Marvel movie with a female hero in the title of the movie. Finding that balance in that movie, that’s very important to me because that’s very much a men’s playing field, historically. But that’s really, really changing now in a great way." Given that COVID-19 has pushed many films way off schedule, it's hard to say exactly when production on ANT MAN 3 will kick off, but pre-COVID, it was expected that it would begin shooting early 2021 for a 2022 release.