It's not a yes, it's not a no, but at least Robert Downey Jr. is thinking about Iron Man 4.
Although he might be a bit concerned that he's getting too old, Robert Downey Jr. hasn't completely ruled out Iron Man 4. There's hope.
Sure, we'll see him again in Avengers: Age of Ultron, as well as in Avengers 3, but there are currently no solid plans for Downey to reprise his role in a standalone Iron Manfilm. Downey Jr. did a pretty good job of putting fans on their toes in an interview he did withEW on the set of Age of Ultron.
“It’s down to Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios president] and Ike [Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel Entertainment] and Disney to come to us with what the proposal is, and that’s on us to agree or disagree,” Downey told EW. “When things are going great, there’s a lot of agreement.”
Whether Downey will be back for Iron Man 4 will possibly be answered at this year's SDCC where Marvel will reveal its movie plans through pretty much the rest of the decade. Surely, if they're going to do another Downey-fronted Iron Man, it'll have to be in the next few years?
“Right now, this has just been swell, hasn’t it?” the actor said about the Avengers sequel. “This has been a really good one and it feels good and we’re having a good time.”
How long can Downey continue having fun in this role? It seems like he has a lot of love for the part, and doesn't necessarily want to let it go any time soon. The decision to depart might as easily come down from Marvel, who's signing the actor's paychecks.
“It’s that thing of: Why give up the belt when it feels like you can barely get jabbed?” he says—then adds a caveat. “Most people are saying that right when they get knocked out.”
In other news, there's still a chance there's a REAL Mandarin in Marvel's future. Roth Cornet of IGN asked Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios, about the possibility of seeing the REAL Mandarin in a future movie.
Feige responded:
"There have been [talks]. That's one of the reasons we wanted to do the fun short that Drew Pearce wrote and directed. That was to clarify, 'Hey, just because we did this thing doesn't mean this other thing doesn't exist.' And as we were making Iron Man 3-- and I think Drew's spoken about this -- that was always our intention, was that Aldrich Killian was perverting the notion of these things he's heard."
Feige continued, "There's a little bit of that when he's doing his detective work in his lab after Happy's been injured outside the Chinese Theater. He's talking about, 'Okay, the Mandarin is taken from various iconographies and mythologies from across the world.' The idea was always there was somebody like this. There had been rumors of somebody like this, and Aldrich Killian just built on that, to make his version."
So if Iron Man 4ever happens, we might have a star and a villain. Fingers crossed!
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