At Marvel they are currently celebrating the 15th anniversary of the premiere of ‘Iron Man’, the film that kicked off the highest-grossing cinematic universe in film history. However, its beginnings were much more complicated than many know, since the first choice of the study said no and now it has been confirmed that Robert Downey Jr. He was also on the verge of not getting the role of Tony Stark for having applied as a candidate to give life to a Marvel villain in a film distributed by Fox and released in 2005.
“We wouldn’t have a studio if it wasn’t for him”
The ‘Fantastic 4’ film in question and the character Downey Jr. aspired to was that of Doctor Doom, a mythical Marvel villain who finally fell into the hands of Julian McMahon, a popular interpreter at that time thanks to his time in the series ‘Charmed’ and ‘Nip/Tuck, at the stroke of a scalpel’. This data has been confirmed by Jon Favreau in a video chatting with Kevin Feige on the genesis of ‘Iron Man’:
I remember that you had already met with him for as Doctor Doom or something like that in another project, I think he had come through maybe “Fantastic Four”. So everybody knew who he was, and I remember sitting down with him, and I was like, ‘God, he’s got that spark in him, in his eyes, and he’s ready.’
Fortunately, the producer Avi Arad ultimately ruled Downey Jr. out for the role in a film that was panned by critics. All this was surely because the actor was still in the full recovery phase of his career after the serious problems he had at the end of the 90s and which, for example, led to his Woody Allen I couldn’t count on him for ‘Melinda and Melinda’.
In the video it is clear that Feige had forgotten that they were about to not have Downey Jr. to star in ‘Iron Man’, something that would have been disastrous for Marvelsince he himself recognizes that the contribution of the actor was essential so that this ambitious universe did not collapse at the first opportunity:
The tone that you and Robert discovered in that movie became the foundation of what would become the MCU. In later movies there were dark days, and I would say to Robert, ‘We wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for you.’ I mean, we wouldn’t have a studio if it wasn’t for him.
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