The release of Iron Man 3 saw an uptick in questions about Iron Man IV and Robert Downey, Jr.‘s place in Marvel’s business plans. This is sort of natural talk for any given blockbuster film, but it was particularly pertinent because Downey’s contract with Marvel was up: he’d done all the films he signed on for. A lot of speculation swirled as the actor made open statements like “I’m not going to be playing Iron Man forever,” and “sure, I’d be interested to watch somebody else in the suit.” But nobody really expected Marvel or Disney to pass up a chance to resign the actor behind their highest grossing superhero sub-franchise, and Marvel announced that a new deal has been struck today.
From Marvel.com:
Marvel is pleased to announce the signing of Robert Downey, Jr. to reprise the role of the “billionaire, genius, playboy, philanthropist.” Under the two-picture agreement, Downey will star as Tony Stark/Iron Man in “Marvel’s The Avengers 2” and “Marvel’s The Avengers 3.”
Note that not only does this announcement not mention any potential Iron Man IV, it even specifies that the agreement was a two picture deal for the next two Avengers movies, which may indicate a truly restrained (for superhero franchises) choice to end the Iron Man franchise at three movies. It almost certainly, and perhaps even more interestingly, indicates that Marvel/Disney is not currently interested in nailing down the details of making more Iron Man films, and doesn’t anticipate being interested in the foreseeable future.
There’s one other thing we can know for sure: since Downey was negotiating from the position of having starred in the Iron Man movies and The Avengers, he has almost certainly been able to leverage that into a very nice paycheck for himself.
