Iron Man is not coming back
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirms that Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark will not be resurrected
Aux News Iron Man
In a behind-the-scenes report on Marvel Studios last month, sources suggested that the panicked MCU overlords were considering resurrecting characters like Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). It’s not exactly a surprise that Marvel would want to go back to the basics: Tony Stark, in particular, was the keystone of the franchise, and Downey was its face. But bringing Iron Man back would require Downey to agree, and as he enters the Oscars conversation (for Oppenheimer) in his post-MCU chapter, why would he even want to?
Anyway, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige says a Tony Stark return is a no-go. “We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” he says in a new profile of Downey for Vanity Fair. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.”
Whether this decision came from Feige’s genuine fidelity to the story or because Downey would never agree to it, we may never know. We do know that Downey didn’t even really want to come back to do reshoots on his final scene for Avengers: Endgame. “We’d already said tearful goodbyes on the last day of shooting. Everybody had moved on emotionally,” director Joe Russo recalled. “We promised him it would be the last time we made him do it—ever.”
“That was a difficult thing for him to do, to come back to pick up that line,” Anthony Russo added. “When he did come back, we were shooting on a stage directly opposite where he auditioned for Tony Stark. So his last line as Tony Stark was shot literally a couple hundred feet from his original audition that got him the role.”
And yes, the godfather of the MCU did have to audition for the part back in the day. “It purely came down to the Marvel board being nervous at putting all of their chips in their future films on somebody who famously had those legal troubles in the past,” Feige shared. He explained that he eventually came up with the idea to have Downey screen test to win over the board, because he “wasn’t very good—and I’m still not great—at taking no for an answer.” Unfortunately for him, if the question is, “Hey, Robert Downey Jr., will you reprise the role of Tony Stark?” It seems like he’s going to have to live with a “no.”
33 Comments
I guess this means Dr Doolittle is joining the MCU.
I’d pay to watch that!
I’d pay to prevent that.
But…but…but…money?
Exactly, RDJ must be up to $50M ask per picture based on his previous contracts. Given the low returns from The Marvels, DSMM and Antman, why trust that they are going to get the same level of enthusiasm like Endgame and wager for back-end points?This time he holds all the power; it’ll take a generation before they can recast Tony Stark in live action.
One hopes that by the next generation they’ve come up with some fresh ideas.
Disney needs product for streaming and the quality with continue to suffer across their entire entertainment. Frozen 3/4? Rey, 15 years older? Young Avengers or much older Avengers? Of course, this really is about extending their IP for the next century!
I know Marvel/Disney is a different company, but they’ve recast Spider-Man and Batman twice in the past 20 years despite the Maguire and Bale movies being popular and beloved (well, 2/3 beloved). Once the current run of Marvel movies loses momentum, they’re more or less guaranteed to start rebooting their original line – I’d give it six or seven years.
would be shocked if we don’t see ‘heroes reborn’ within the decade.
I think the plan was to do Kang, then Secret Wars, then have that result in a new timeline and take that as an opportunity to recast some roles. But Kang didn’t work out, and people are already sick of multiverse stuff, so they’re kind of backed into a corner.
Iron Man has been a longer run than any of the Batmen(?) and they may only be able to go younger for the foreseeable future with that character. We give such little new material to Bruce Wayne that anyone could put on the mask at this point. Realistically who would really want to be the next “Iron Man” and face the inevitable comparisons and toxic fanbase?
i know it’s not apples to apples but it’s funny to have this ‘we worked so hard we’d never touch that moment’ spiel over iron man while simultaneously bringing back jackman’s wolverine in their next movie.
It’s pretty much the same thing – they did a sendoff movie for the character and both Jackman and Stewart said publicly it was their swansong as Wolverine and Xavier. Stewart has already returned for a cameo since and Jackman is starring in Deadpool 3 (and seems likely to be in Secret Wars too).If RDJ agreed to come back, they’ll come up with the same type of walking back logic as they did with those characters (it’s an alt-universe version or something similar).
I think the difference is Jackman said what he said in the vacuum of Fox owning X-Men. His calculus changed after the Disney buyout and expanded possibilities for his old franchise within the MCU.Downey, on the other hand, has been at the core of the MCU since the beginning. There’s no reinvention to be had. He was already at the center of the action and has nowhere else to go with the character.
i think the calculus is more ‘getting divorced’ than anything.
Also, it’s fair to say that Wolverine showing up in Deadpool 3 will be for comic effect, since the Deadpool franchise is mostly comic. Jackman is probably fine with that.
I would not at all be shocked to have an evil multiversal Stark as the villain in an upcoming movie – at least, if Downey would agree to it.
It depends. I see Jackman’s being in Deadpool as more of fulfilling a long running joke that the fans will be into. If he hangs around in the MCU for other more serious films, then maybe you would have a point.
i very much do not have a point, the similarities just made me laugh
I guess Scarlett is coming back then.
She has agreed to play IM if he is rewritten as an asian.
So, after so many claims from that Variety article have been debunked since its publication, I think it’s safe to say that their source was full of crap.
He can say whatever he wants, but the fact is they’ll keep turning back to the nostalgia well if their movies keep underdelivering in terms of finances. No “emotional farewell” that fits the narrative will possibly override an extra $100 million at the box office if it means having to stoop to beg Chris Evans for a cameo.
Clearly, success changed everything, but this is a big change from what Feige and crew said originally about the MCU. Initially, the plan was to treat the characters like James Bond and recast them over and over. Can’t remember where I read it, but it was early days in the MCU.
this is from 2012:“I think Bond is a good example. Let’s put it this way: I hope Downey makes a lot of movies for us as Stark. If and when he doesn’t, and I’m still here making these movies, we don’t take him to Afghanistan and have him wounded again. I think we James Bond it.”obviously they changed their tune when downey re-upped his contract, but yeah.
Ah, there it is. Later than I thought, but the same year as Avengers makes sense for Feige to start thinking about the future. Thanks!
And the thing is they do have a bit precedent from the comics: Stark uploaded his consciousness into an artificial intelligence along the lines of what that they already did in the MCU with the creation of Ultron and Vision. That could even help them with the whole can’t-get-Downey-to-do-it-thing. They could explain that his A.I. is similar but different, whatever.
“Whether this decision came from Feige’s genuine fidelity to the story or because Downey would never agree to it, we may never know.”
Let’s not leave out the third option that it was a horseshit unfounded rumor to begin with.
Considering how Marvel completely shot their wad with the ending of that monster Infinity Stones arc, what did they think was going to happen? Throw movies into the theaters starring the also-rans of the Marvel Universe (the Eternals, the Marvels) and people don’t give a flip. I’m “shocked”. (DC is also scraping the bottom of the barrel. Their Blue Beetle movie is proof-positive of their well going dry too.)Both Marvel/Disney and DC/Warners have squeezed their golden geese to the point where there’s nothing left. It was inevitable.
With Marvel’s history of having their actors lie on media tours promoting the umpteenth movie in the MCU, we can probably assume that, yes, Tony Stark will be resurrected. Classic case of the boy who cried wolf!
I am not sure what we are supposed to take away from this article. If RDJ needs a paycheck and Marvel wants a boost in viewers down the road, this seems like an easy thing to work out. Now that they have opened the multiverse, “identical Tony Stark but from a virtually identical alternate universe” is absolutely in play. I can appreciate Feige wanting IM’s sacrifice to be meaningful, but at the same time… I don’t think Marvel is looking at the returns from Antman 3 and The Marvels and thinking “yeah, but did you *see* the ending of Endgame? We can’t touch that.”
At least so far, the “variant” characters haven’t been undo buttons. Loki(s) and Gamora both pointedly went in different directions from the versions that were killed off.
True. They might even have variant Tony Stark who is different somehow. I suppose my point was that if RDJ wants to show up back in the MCU (whether as a favor, for a boatload of money, whatever) the MCU can and will accommodate that. I suppose there is a chance that Marvel could also just recast variant RDJ as Tony Stark – there was a rumor that Tom Cruise was going to cameo as Iron Man in DS2 but the schedules did not work out. Either way, if the Marvel wants Iron Man back, he is coming back. If Marvel wants RDJ, I am sure they will try to reach an agreement.