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Jon Favreau, Kevin Feige, and Justin Theroux Iron Man 2 Q&A

How tough is it to juggle Tony Stark’s character details and individual story, while satisfying the demands of getting the larger Marvel story to Avengers, in terms of characters like Nick Fury? And can you talk a little about Sam Rockwell’s performance and why he didn’t make the poster?
Jon Favreau: "Well, let’s see... The characters, the trick is to make them, to feather them in so they don’t overwhelm the story and you don’t suffer from villain-itis.

So by having Justin Hammer and Mickey Rourke’s characters come together fairly early, you really have two storylines that are weaving; you don’t have five separate storylines. It’s the same thing with Scarlett [Johansson] as Black Widow, working her way into Gwyneth and Robert’s story. So we really tried to keep narrative flows going so that we didn’t get too convoluted, because I lose track of that stuff. Especially in sequels as the franchises get more complex, I don’t always remember what happened in the last movie. Not for nothing, I like to watch the stuff blow up, but I’m not going to do homework before I see a sequel to be up on everything. So we tried to keep that simple."

"And Justin Hammer, Sam Rockwell was somebody that I had known and I thought would work really well with Mickey. He doesn’t get intimidated by talented performers and movie stars. He’s done a great job with a lot of people."

How did Susan Downey become a producer?

Jon Favreau: "[...]Okay, Susan is a great producer.

It’s not like she came on board and became a producer because we’re making Iron Man. Quite the contrary. We were funneling towards a start date and we had a lot of ideas spread out. We had bulletin boards and Justin was there and Robert was there and Kevin and myself, and Jeremy Latchem with index cards trying to figure out how to make the work flow through. She had tremendous organizational ability and she understands Robert’s creative process and understands the first movie and lived through it with us. So Susan, who had a very strong background both in development and physical production, was able to come in and just help."

"It’s like one of those shows where they’re going to organize all your closets for you and make you throw out the clothes you don’t need anymore. But it takes somebody who says, 'You’re never going to wear that again. You’re never going to fit in that.' And they throw it away or give it away or figure out a way to spruce it up."

You sidestepped the Sam Rockwell question.

Jon Favreau: "Sidestep, I’m like Alan Greenspan."

Sam’s in almost none of the promo items and he’s not here today. Is there a falling out?

Jon Favreau: "Yes, you hit the motherload. No, I love Sam. Sam’s doing a play. I hope to be working with him again."

[Robert Downey Jr says, "I had the same question though. I thought he must be doing a play or something."]

Jon Favreau: "Yeah, he’s on Broadway doing a play right now. He’s awesome. He’s going to be at the premiere. You can ask him yourself then. Ever since our first collaboration when he was the gender unspecific concierge in Made I knew that he was an inspiring inspired dude. I wish he could be here selfishly because he’s a fun, funny guy and he really always was a fountainhead of ideas and great stuff, and I wish he could have been here. He can’t. So unfortunately there’s no fire where that smoke is."

And you’d originally considered him for Tony Stark?

Jon Favreau: "Well, we were putting lists together long before I even met with Robert."

[Robert Downey Jr says to the reporter: "That’s enough. It’s embarrassing. You’re embarrassing yourself."]

Jon Favreau: "But I thought he could be a sort of untraditional other way to go as we were listing a lot of younger actors that didn’t have a lot of experience and were a little bit more traditionally what you’d think for a superhero role. Then when I met Robert, pretty much we clicked and I knew that that was the guy."

"As Justin Hammer, I think you see a cool, goofy image of what... Justin Hammer wishes he was Tony Stark and he really embraced that aspect of the character, and I think it’s really fun for that way. He has a ball with it."

Is there still talk of a Black Widow spinoff?

Jon Favreau: "I would love to see it. Hell yes."

Kevin Feige: "Definitely possible. Yes, absolutely."

What other cool stuff do you have planned for the DVD?

Jon Favreau: "Well, there’s a lot of featurettes. We were running cameras behind the scenes all the time. We don’t like to really show too much of it before the movie comes out to keep some surprises, but everything was very well documented. We have, as you can see, a very interesting group of people. So between the interviews, you get a really good sense - we’re fans of these movies. Kevin and I are always swapping back and forth books and things about the movies that we grew up loving, so we document it very well."

"There’s going to be pretty extensive featurettes and then commentary this time around, and then also deleted scenes that we thought would be interesting for people to see. So it’s more a movie fan set of extras, people who really want to immerse themselves. If you don’t, it’s going to be boring. If you don’t like that kind of thing, it’s going to be. We did overkill on this one."