Michelle Pfeiffer Almost Left Ant-Man and the Wasp

Screen Rant

By Danny Salemme

Published Jul 3, 2018

Ant-Man and the Wasp star Michelle Pfeiffer reveals she almost bailed on the Marvel movie at the very last minute, but everything worked out.

Before filming had even begun, Michelle Pfeiffer almost left Ant-Man and the Wasp. However, that's not to say she had hard feelings toward the movie itself - as this wouldn't be the first time Pfeiffer almost left a movie at the last minute.

The 20th entry in the MCU, Ant-Man and the Wasp follows up on the events left hanging after Captain America: Civil War back in 2016. Since then, Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) has been sentenced to house arrest following his objection to the Sokovia Accords. This so happens to coincide with the arrival of a villain named Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), which ultimately thrusts Lang back into action alongside Hope Pym/The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) and her father/former Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). In their pursuit for the greater good, the trio ends up unearthing secrets from the past - which partly has to do with Hank's wife/former Wasp Janet van Dyne (Pfeiffer). However, it just so happens that Pfeiffer nearly never made it to the final cut of the movie, as the actress came close to the leaving the movie before filming had even begun.

In an interview with THR, Pfeiffer opened up about her tendency to leave movies at the last minute. When she spoke with Ant-Man and the Wasp director Peyton Reed, she was up front with him about her unpredictable disposition on film sets - and how it was nothing personal. When Pfeiffer told Reed that possibly leaving movies at the last minute was her "process on every single movie" she had done in her career, he was adamant that he woo her with enough reasons to stay aboard. She flat-out said, "I've tried to back out of the movie at the last minute. That's just my M.O."

Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns

Once Reed understood that Pfeiffer might have seriously left the movie without warning, he made sure to keep her involved with the process of adapting the character to the big screen. He introduced her to various comics from the 1960s that featured van Dyne, but more importantly personally sought out her input as to what sort of mental state she believed the character might be in, considering the 30 years that she had been stuck in the Quantum Realm. In the end, the wooing won her over.

Given the nearly 30 years since Pfeiffer had starred in a superhero movie (as Catwoman in Tim Burton's Batman Returns in 1992), it's evident that she's grown stylistically averse to the genre. However, given that other high-caliber actors like Douglas, Robert Redford, Cate Blanchett, and Anthony Hopkins have taken part in the MCU, their involvement may well have fueled her eventual enthusiasm.