A couple of weeks ago when the uber talented
Shane Black, screenwriter of the Lethal Weapon series, The Long Kiss Goodnight and director of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was hired by Marvel to direct
Iron Man 3 and despite a
76% approval rating from our OWF poll - a few of you mentioned the greatness of the appointment depended on whether Black was also writing the screenplay. Which at the time I thought was a particularly odd comment because common sense would suggest that you don't hire someone like Black unless you give him free reign on the screenplay AND if you're Black, you don't do Iron Man 3 without having the luxury of fully being able to play around with Tony Stark's world. But it's always nice to get confirmation, nevertheless, and that's what we have today... An
AICN reader was present at the Omaha Film Festival over the weekend where Black revealed that he would indeed be writing Iron Man 3 with
Robert Downey Jr '
contributing' to the story and with Marvel;
'not happy with the direction Iron Man 2 took... Iron Man 3 will not be another "two men in iron suits fighting each other" film. Instead, it will be more like a Tom Clancy-thriller, with Iron Man fighting real world villains".
The reader, the self-named Krullboy, goes on to say that Black claimed that;
"Marvel is only doing crossover characters to lead up to The Avengers, and once that film is released, the plan is to go back to self-contained single-character stories."
Which means no cameo's from other heroes in Iron Man 3.
All this sounds like news we all wanted to hear - Black is the perfect man right now to take Iron Man 3 back to the grounded success of the original and I couldn't be more delighted with how the film is being prepared right now. Especially with talk of taking it as far away from Iron Man 2 as they possibly can (a movie I couldn't get along with) and returning the universe to a more gritty, realistic and politically minded portrayal. I guess we all expected The Mandarin to perhaps be the villain for the third movie but I'm not certain you can tell his story in a down-to-Earth thriller... I also think it's a great to plug the cameo spillage that seems to be over-flowing with the Marvel projects right now. A stand-alone Iron Man 3 which doesn't worry about shoehorning anyone elses story into it seems wise, especially as Iron Man 2 felt like it existed more to build up to The Avengers than tell a good Tony Stark story. Clearly there'll be plenty of future opportunities to add more Marvel characters into other films. Iron Man 3 is due to open May 2013, one year after The Avengers is released next May, around the same time as filming should begin on Iron Man 3. Early talk couldn't be better for me...