Michael Douglas Shifts From Ant-Man To Beyond The Reach

Michael Douglas' two movies this year couldn't be much more different, moving from the snappy thrills of Ant-Man to the dark tension of Beyond the Reach. The two-time Oscar-winner admits that he likes to try new things with each project.

Ant-Man was something of a dream come true. "Well, I just wanted to do one of these pics, you know," he says. "My entire career is movies that have just been contemporary stories, with no special effects. So this was just the excitement of saying, 'Hey, I want to get into Marvel world!' It's larger than life, and there's a certain theatricality about it."

Now 70 years old, he says that making the movie was so much fun that he hopes things get "a little more bizarre" for Ant-Man 2. "I'm not signed up to anything more," he adds. "I've learned a whole lot and would look forward to more if it comes my way."

Meanwhile, Beyond the Reach offered a very different challenge, as he produced the film as well as taking one of the lead roles as villainous billionaire John Madec opposite Jeremy Irvine's small-town tracker. "I enjoy an edge. I like the grey area, the grey area to dark," he says. "Beyond the Reach is the closest I have come to an old-fashioned Western in terms of black hats and white hats."

More: Read our review of Beyond The Reach

But this isn't the first time Douglas has played a wealthy bad guy. "Well, in The Game, he was not very nice from the beginning. You sort of love to hate him, but he was the victim in that one," he says. "The other ones - I'm thinking of The Perfect Murder and of course Gordon Gekko in Wall Street - I just have to say it's good to be bad! It's fun. You're kind of above everything. You can play off anybody. You have no moral compass. You just try to be as charming as possible and fun, so everybody says, 'I'd kind of like to be that guy!' And then you can kind of twist it around. Once you've seduced and brought them in, then you can show how bad you can really be."

Watch the trailer for Beyond The Reach here:

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