ANT-MAN 3 Casts Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror

 

Kang is coming to conquer the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Deadline has revealed that the untitled third Ant-Man film starring Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly has cast Jonathan Majors as the film's supervillain, Kang the Conqueror.

According to the article, Peyton Reed, director of Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, is returning to helm the third installment, with Jeff Loveness writing the script.  Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige will serve as producer.

Majors, 31, is currently known as Atticus "Tic" Freeman on the HBO series Lovecraft Country.  His other films include The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Da 5 Bloods, Jungleland, Captive State, White Boy Rick, and Hostiles.  In addition, he's appeared in the TV docudrama When We Rise.

Created in 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Kang the Conqureror first appeared in Fantastic Four (vol.1) #19 as Nathaniel Richards, a 31st-century scholar and possible descendant of Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards, who became fascinated with history and discovered the time travel technology created by Doctor Doom.  Richards traveled back in time to ancient Egypt aboard a Sphinx-shaped timeship and became the Pharaoh Rama-Tut.  Rama-Tut's rule was cut short when he was defeated by the time-displaced Fantastic Four.

Embittered, Richards traveled forward to the 20th century, where he met Doctor Doom, whom he believed might be his ancestor.  He later designed armor based on Doom's and, calling himself the Scarlet Centurion, pit the Avengers team against their alternate-reality counterparts.  He planned to dispose of all of them, but the Avengers managed to force him from the timeline.  Richards then tried to return to the 31st century, but overshot it by a thousand years, discovering a war-torn Earth that used advanced weapons they no longer understood.  He found it simple to conquer the planet, expanding his dominion throughout the galaxy, and reinvented himself as Kang the Conqueror in The Avengers (vol.1) #8.

During Richards' first trip into the 20th century under the Kang identity, he met and battled the Avengers, capturing everyone but the Wasp and Rick Jones, and informed the world that they had 24 hours to surrender to him.  Jones and some friends pretended they wanted to help Kang, but double-crossed him once they gained access to his ship and freed the Avengers.  In an attempt to stop them, Kang released radiation that only beings from his time were immune to, but Thor used his hammer to absorb the rays and send them back at the warlord so that even he couldn't withstand them, and Kang was forced to escape.

Ant-Man 3 is currently planned to arrive in theaters sometime in 2022.