“What happened is that on the first one they sort threw the script out and kind of improvised the whole thing and they stuck a landing,” says the source, a prolific member of the Hollywood community whose identity can't be revealed, but who's about as credible as they come. “They stuck the landing and it turned out to be a good movie. Then the attitude was, ‘Let’s do it again.’ The problem is that if you do it once, you’re lucky. Trying to do it twice, your odds of success aren’t that great. Robert Downey Jr. and the director, Jon Favreau, their friendship broke up over that whole mess of the second movie. Did you notice they didn’t do press together?”
The question, of course, is why they had this falling out. “Because the movie sucked, and I think Robert Downey, Jr. blamed Jon Favreau. That’s why Downey dropped out of Cowboys and Aliens, because he didn’t want to work with Jon Favreau again. Also, by the way, it’s why Jon Favreau dropped out of The Avengers. I thought the odds of him directing Iron Man 3 were slim, and that proved right.“