Demon In A Bottle?

By June 2008, reports began circulating that Marvel weren’t willing or able to pay Favreau a decent salary to helm Iron Man 2. Said IESB:

So bottom line, Jon Favreau has not been locked in to direct Iron Man 2 for the simple reason that Marvel is being cheap - this is 100% accurate folks, no bullshit.

Come July, two months of chitter-chatter was curtailed when it was announced that Jon Favreau had finally signed on to Iron Man 2. Deadline reported that Marvel made a “richer offer” that Favs accepted.

Meanwhile, the director was playing havoc with the numerous reports about where the plot of the sequel might go.

Despite having expressed an interest in the Demon In A Bottle storyline, the release of Hancock was getting him antsy.

“I haven’t seen Hancock yet,” he said. “From what I’ve seen it seems there is a lot of imagery that seems to be shared. Him flying through billboards and things.

“The idea of the hero whose biggest enemy is himself, and him fighting through his demons, you want to come at the audience with something fresh. You don’t want to feel like you are echoing something that somebody else is doing.”

No biggy, though, as Favs insisted that “there are plenty of story lines to explore from the 40 years of history from that character”, while hinting that the Mandarin elements – Mandarin being the popular supervillain – in the first Iron Man (check out the Ten Rings) could be explored further.

“There is a lot that is very relevant about that character, in the pool of the landscape that we find ourselves in,” he said.

In July 2008, Tropic Thunder scribe Justin Theroux signed on to script the sequel, and by August Jon Favreau confirmed that they had already begun pre-prod development work.

And with the confidence of a consummate professional, he showed that he knew what he was doing by acknowledging why some superhero movies end up on the scrapheap.

“Either the director was unfamiliar [with the] source material or the director chose to depart from it for personal reasons,” he explains.

“Another reason is that the studios that had the rights to a particular franchise would never think twice about compromising the source material if thought it would enhance the commercial appeal.”

How about that fast-approaching release date?

“The date is daunting,” the director conceded. “We are making much faster progress than the first time around and have much less to design and fewer casting issues.

“I am confident that 2010 is achievable if we continue working together as we have for the past few months. It has to be great, though. It has to be great.”

Next: Casting Cheadle