It isn’t exactly breaking news, but Jon Favreau tells the LA Times that while nothing official has happened, he’s begun work on developing Iron Man 2. “We’re working on it now,” he said, “which hasn’t been officially announced. It will be released in 2010.”
That means he’s figuring out which members of Iron Man’s fairly boring rogue’s gallery to bring to the screen in the new film. Maybe developing the movie against the backdrop of the Chinese Olympic games will mean that the Mandarin, who was Favreau’s original villain for the first film, will make an appearance; he was, of course, teased in the first movie, as the name of the terrorist group that kidnapped Tony Stark – The Ten Rings – is a reference to the Mandarin’s ten alien power rings.
While Favreau is balls deep in breaking the Iron Man sequel story, I hope that he gives some serious thought to the film’s naming convention. Will it be Iron Man 2? Iron Man II? Maybe something ‘techy’ like Iron Man 2.0? Or will he eschew the numbers all together and go for the subhead: Iron Man: Ten Rings of Death or Iron Man: Armor Wars? What about the Dark Knight path? Could we see Shellhead? Or The Golden Avenger? There are so many option, so many possibilities. Hopefully Favreau is weighing each with wisdom and humility.