Yahoo Movies Lovecraft Country star Jonathan Majors joins next Ant-Man movie in major role
Rising star Jonathan Majors is moving out of Lovecraft Country and into Marvel country for his next big role.
Majors is joining the third Ant-Man movie in a prominent role that is likely Kang the Conqueror, EW has learned. A rep for Disney did not comment. Deadline was the first to report the news.
If Majors' role is officially Kang, it marks a major clue for how Disney will weave characters from the previously Fox-owned Marvel properties into its connected universe.
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Kang, born Nathaniel Richards, grew to become a prominent villain in Marvel Comics who traversed and (as his namesake suggests) conquered multiple timelines. The character feels like a natural fit for Ant-Man, since Paul Rudd's Scott Lang introduced the concept of time travel via the Quantum Realm in Avengers: Endgame.
Way back in 2015, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn was responding to fan comments on Facebook when he revealed that characters like the Shi'ar and Kang were "owned by Fox." Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox properties—which included the movie rights to X-Men, Fantastic Four, and other Marvel characters—became finalized in 2019.
Though Disney released The New Mutants in theaters as the last remnant of what was Fox's X-Men universe, the studio does not have immediate plans to tackle the X-Men in a major way. Disney held a summit in early 2020 as a preview of upcoming titles and not even Deadpool was on the docket at the time, as EW previously reported. However, it was clear the architects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were interested in tapping new characters from Fox into the world(s) of the Avengers. Kang seems part of that plan.
Peyton Reed will return to direct Ant-Man 3, which again will star Rudd and Evangeline Lilly (as Hope van Dyne/Wasp).
In addition to currently starring on HBO's Lovecraft Country, Majors was seen in Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods on Netflix after receiving praise for his role in The Last Black Man in San Francisco. He was also cast in Netflix's The Harder They Fall, an upcoming Western starring Idris Elba, Regina King, and LaKeith Standfield.
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