Robert Downey Jr. to "Leave It All on the Field" with Iron Man 3
Posted 08.19.11 by Ryan
Robert Downey Jr., who is just about finished filming his portion of The Avengers, soon will be reprising the Iron Man role in another solo adventure, currently being written by director Shane Black with assistance from Drew Pearce (Marvel's unproduced The Runaways).
Reportedly, Iron Man 3, will see the character fight "real world villains" in a "Tom Clancy-style thriller" and that villain will be one that "fanboys will appreciate," though other details about the script are being kept under wraps. Actor Don Cheadle, who played Lt. James "Rhodey" Rhodes in Iron Man 2, has revealed that shooting will start in February (with a release date planned in 2013), so whatever Black and Pearce are working on will have to finished pretty quickly.
Whatever Iron Man 3 is going to be about, Downey Jr. told The LA Times that the third installment needs to "leave it all on the field."
My sense of it is that we need to leave it all on the field — whatever that means in the end. You can pick several different points of departure for that.
If Downey isn't careful, he's going to get a reputation for being cryptic, but what he's very clear about is his approval of Black, whom he worked with in Black's 2005 directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
He’s more than the sum of his parts and he’s also kind of been a sleeper for a long time. We’re not talking much about [the script] right now because Shane is off writing and we talked before that and when we are talking again the talking is going to be over pretty quick [because we're on the same page]. It’s kind of like we’re fighting on the same side and at the same time we’re circling each other, so it’s all great. It should be great.
That should come as a relief to Iron Man fans since director Jon Favreau, who helmed the first two Iron Man movies, declined to return for Iron Man 3. Downey admits, according to the report, that "a lot of things worked but plenty of other things didn’t" in Iron Man 2, and that bringing in Black was the only way he could see transitioning from the "Favreau era" of Iron Man.
Bringing in Shane Black to write and direct Iron Man 3 to me is basically the only transition from Favreau to a "next thing" that Favreau and the audience and Marvel and I could ever actually sign off on.
And as Downey likes to remind everyone, things will get really interesting once Marvel talks to Favreau about reprising his Iron Man role of Happy Hogan. "The fun thing is going to be getting Happy in the movie," said Downey with a grin.
Next Showing: Iron Man 3 opens May 3, 2013