http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2952&p=.htm Awesome! I hope they avoid the mistakes of other superhero threequels like X3 and Spider-Man 3. Some suggestions. Get back Jon Favreau as director. Focus completely on the Iron Man characters, and leave out the Avengers stuff since this will be after that movie's release. Finally use the Mandarin already! What direction do you think they should take the sequel in?
Since there won't be an upcoming Avengers movie for which to advertise, I hope they get back John Favreau and let him do whatever the hell he wants.
It's actually Jon not John and I believe he will return as director if he's not locked up already. I predicted that we would see "Iron Man 3" in 2013. I hope it's better than the second one and they use the Mandarin (Favs has stated already that of course it makes sense to use him, it's just a matter of how to make him not silly). The "Untitled Star Trek Sequel" is coming out in July 2012 so I'm not sure what that poster was trying to say and if he meant that it will be the Summer of Trek, I don't think so since it will have HEAVY competition.
Everyone expected Bryan Singer to do X3, but he ended up getting kicked out. I just hope that doesn't happen to Favreau. He was the main reason along with RDJ that the first movie was as great and it was. It would be a tragedy if Marvel cheaped out and got someone like Ratner to do the next movie. Also I'm still a little worried about studio interference. Raimi gave Sony two huge hits with the first Spider-Man movies, but they still forced him to put in Venom in the third movie.
He wasn't exactly kicked out as he left to do "Superman Returns" that's two different things completely.
Nah, IM2 was waaaay better than X3 and Spider-Man 3. Singer left to do Superman Returns, but he was willing to come back to direct X3. FOX got Ratner instead.
IM2 suffered from the same problems "Spider-Man 3" did and was no where near as good as the first movie was but I digress, we've had this debate before lol.
I think their bigger concern would probably be not having him come off as the old "Yellow Peril/Fu Manchu" villain stereotype. I'm sure Iron Man 3 will make him more tech-based to fit into the world they've established. I can easily see them changing the Mandarin's ethnicity, too. But 2013 is good timing for the sequel. I just hope The Avengers movie won't burn everybody out on the Marvel characters. And that Faverau comes back to wrap everything up.
They probably won't even call him Mandarin in the movie. Ivan was never called Whiplash in IM2, so they'll probably call Mandarin by the name Gene Khan, which would be fine. I just hope they pick a great asian actor for the role. I don't see the point of making the rings tech-based. Iron Men is going to be in a movie with Thor, they might as well use magic.
The Iron Man writers really dislike using code names for some reason. Iron Monger and War Machine were only used once in a sentence, easily missable, while Whiplash and Black Widow were never named onscreen. That's why I see them going with Gene Khan instead of Mandarin, which would be fine for me.
20th Century Fox had been short-sighting Singer ever since the first movie. They gave him six months less time on a restricted budget for the first movie, they still cut his budget for the second movie requiring him to cut characters and sequences like Sentinels, the Danger Room and Angel, and for the third movie when he asked for a bigger paycheck (understandable since he delivered two excellent movies) and a bigger budget for the third Fox essentially told him to screw off (which is funny because X-Men: The Last Stand eventually had the biggest budget of all the films, after Singer departed). Singer abandoning ship to direct Superman was as a result of poor management by Fox. WB offered Singer carte blanche with a big budget and creative control, something he didn't have with Fox. It's almost as if they thought they could keep Singer on a tight leash but that didn't last long. When he saw a better opportunity arise that offered more artistic freedom, like any creative person he took it. As for Iron Man 3, I'm really very lukewarm over how to receive this film. I figured there was going to be a third movie anyway but I was sorely disappointed by Iron Man 2. Since the first movie was great, and there was rampant rumors of studio inference with the second movie, I'm hoping with The Avengers finally out of the way Marvel can just let Jon Favreau make the movie he wants to make with Iron Man 3 and stay out of his way. Maybe we'll have a reverse scenario from what we're accustom to- the second movie sucks, but the third movie is actually decent. That would be interesting.
Was that all going towards the film, though? Presumably that budget was also factoring in the involvement of two other directors & the development they undertook before Brett Ratner came on board. I think that's a fairly common practice in Hollywood. Star Trek: the Motion Picture carried all the development of the abandoned Phase II series as a part of its production costs.
Tom Rothman said that they were throwing tons of money at X-Men: The Last Stand because it was "the last film" and they wanted all their eggs in a basket.
Um...did everyone watch the same Iron Man 2 that I did? It wasn't quite as good as the first, for sure, but still a very fun and worthy film.