Apparently Kang the Conqueror Will Be ‘Ant-Man 3’s’ Villain
By George Robbins
Franchises are a massive part of the creative industry as a whole and account for the largest part of the income made. They are what allow companies to expand to the furthest reaches of the world and invest themselves in every possible type of industry out there. This is why, unless the movie that was made was based off of something, you won’t just see merchandise crop up for random films. In fact, I think at this point, franchises make up most of the market at large solely due to the merchandising fact behind it all. It means that unless a franchise can be made out of something, a movie or game will more than likely not get made.
This sort of ends up working out for the consumer because it means that people are going to end up getting new content to play or view on a regular basis. One of the unfortunate parts of a franchise, however, is the fact that quality usually suffers as a result of the fact that something is constantly expected to come out. This makes it so that fans are always expecting things to carry on as they have and they expect the content to always be incredible. This has made it extremely difficult for companies to keep up with current demand as they can’t usually keep up with the high quality demand being asked of them. Thus, not many franchises actually end up succeeding in the long run.
Franchises have a couple of different paths laid out for them as time rolls on. They can take the heavy merchandising route where all they do is focus on the merchandise aspect and companies can sell content related to that franchise to make up for lost income. They can also be pretty successful and be able to keep people entertained as time goes on without declining in overall enjoyment. Another option is that they can go down both paths and they can be successful in multiple ways or they can do the opposite and fail miserably. Not many companies are capable of making franchises which can manage to do the third one, but we know of one that has done it already, Disney.
The Disney Company is one of worldwide renown which has cemented its place as a company which is most likely to last for an extremely long time moving forward. They might be catching flak nowadays because of everything going on with their new live-action movie ‘Mulan’ and their other business practices, but this won’t change anything. Disney is the type of company to bounce back after everything goes wrong for them, which is how they have succeeded so much after all these years. They are known mostly for the amount of effort they put into making their projects work which is why they are a perfect company for making franchises, which is exactly what they’ve done. Over the years, they have made many successful franchises.
They are unique in the fact that they don’t just have specific franchises, but their animated films grouped together are pretty much a franchise. Not only this but they can create franchises from their singular films that they produce for the public. This is why they have been able to make nearly every piece of content they own a success, but this mostly applies to animated films. When it comes to live-action films, Disney has to rely on already established content like the Star Wars franchise and their wildly popular Marvel Cinematic Universe. The later of which has been the most profitable purchase they have ever made followed by the purchase of the former franchise.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, became popular immediately after the release of the original ‘Iron Man‘ film back in 2008. Marvel Studios was created in order to carry on this torch and they created a wildly successful franchise of films. This was very quickly picked up on by Disney and they began making a fortune based off of how popular this franchise became and we ended up with plenty of spin-offs as a result. Disney took that wild success and made it somehow even more profitable by using merchandising rights to make toys and other pieces of related content that they could sell. Needless to say, the MCU is still the most popular modern day franchise other than Star Wars which has had its popularity survive through merchandising.
Despite what is going on in the world right now, the MCU is still doing its best to carry on by making plans for upcoming filming for new movies. Among those new upcoming films is the third film in the ‘Ant-Man’ series of films currently named ‘Ant-Man 3.’ It is meant to begin filming some time in June of next year and it will have a 2022 release attached to it, at least as of now. Unsurprisingly, not much has been revealed about the movie thus far, but we now know that ‘Lovecraft Country‘ star Jonathan Majors has been cast for a role in the film. Reportedly, the role that he has been cast for has been revealed as the villain Kang the Conqueror who will most likely be playing the role of the main villain in the upcoming hero film. The only way to know for sure now is to wait and see.