Michael Douglas Wants to Do 'Ant-Man' Prequel

Ant-Man and the Wasp star Michael Douglas is game for a prequel centered around Hank Pym, the original size-shifting superhero who first donned the Ant-Man identity.

Asked during a Facebook Live stream on Sunday if Hank Pym will ever get to suit up again, Douglas answered, "Oh God, I hope so. I really hope so."

"I don't know, you know, I'm just thinking now — you can get small, you can get big, you can get young," the 73-year-old actor said. "I'm for having a prelude — sorry Paul [Rudd] — but I think it's time to go back to Hank Pym."

"I know Michael Douglas a little bit, if there's one thing he loves, it's putting on a suit, a superhero suit. Loves it, loves the feel of it," joked director Peyton Reed.

"They're the heroes, I tell you," Douglas said, gesturing towards Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly, who suit up as newly minted superhero team Ant-Man and Wasp. "I don't know how you do it."

Decades before ex-con and single father Scott Lang (Rudd) donned the shrinking abilities of the Ant-Man suit, Hank Pym and lover Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) operated as the original Ant-Man and the Wasp, their partnership ending in disaster with Janet's apparent death in 1987 when she disappeared into the mysterious Quantum Realm.

2015's Ant-Man already de-aged Douglas in a scene set in 1989, technology the acting veteran hopes could be used to allow him to star in his own Hank Pym prequel.

"I'd like to see him, if there's magic, we do movie magic in terms of flashbacks," Douglas told Screen Rant. "How about getting Hank back to his prime age as the original Ant-Man and kick some serious ass?"

Marvel Studios utilized similar tricks to age-down Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War and Kurt Russell in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, but the Disney-owned studio has yet to use expensive digital means to recreate an actor's appearance for an entire movie. Should it ever happen, Douglas says, he's prepared.

"I'm ready. I'm geared," Douglas said. "I need a good stunt double. You know, I'll find him, but now you can make me look 40 years younger let's do the whole job!"

Ant-Man and the Wasp opens July 6.