627acd6fd8620f8404387685a287ded9Film sites have used the Marvel audience’s fear of a Downey Jr.-less MCU to drive a lot of clicks in the last few months, with lots of ink fixated on his statements about not knowing where he might go from here. That was always posturing- negotiating in the press, as they say, and the thousands of blogs played right into it.

So now the inevitable news comes that Robert Downey Jr. has signed a two-picture deal that guarantees his presence both The Avengers 2 and The Avengers 3.

Obviously that creates the question: What about an Iron Man 4? And what about cameos? Also…. how much? Surely someone is going to dig hard for that info.

It’s crazy to contemplate Marvel laying off the very specific franchise that just spawned the now-fifth highest-grossing film of all time, but that seems to be the suggesting. They’re not going to reboot or recast when RDJ is still set for a film that won’t hit till 2017 or later.

What this suggests is that Marvel wanted to get this news out as quickly as possible and that this was the easiest deal to make. They’ve had a problem with their leaky ship, so getting this out the door while they could still control the news is a natural move. This doesn’t mean negotiations are over though, and it also allows them to just kind of skip over the IM4/cameo question. I have to imagine it’s slightly easier to negotiate with the face of your cinematic endeavors over his payout on the franchise that he at least shares screentime in, even if he is said to have gotten a $50-$100m payout for the first Avengers.

So is this merely round one, or is Marvel capping off Iron Man as a trilogy and letting other character swap in? Your thoughts?

 

Source | Marvel.com