Tony Stark will next grace the silver screen on April 30, 2010, and while that's not super soon, it ain't that far off either. Still, Favreau admits that scripting is still in the early stages.
"Pages are coming out, but it's really more of a conversation than actual writing," Favreau says of screenwriter Justin Theroux's progress. "They are never really what they are going to be in the movie until the day you're shooting."
To get a sense of the film's plot, fans need to look no further than Matt Fraction's current work on Invincible Iron Man.
"We want to talk to [Fraction] and get him out here," Favreau says. "The Fraction series seems to be informed as much by our movie as by what happened with Iron Man before."
He also indicates that one of the main bents of "Iron Man 2" will be the rise of Tony towards the forming of Nick Fury's Avengers. Fans should also keep an eye out for a certain ring-obsessed super-bad...
"We'll see how that basic group of four people moves forward towards the inevitable 'Avengers' that's coming and how the Mandarin, how largely he looms in the next one, that's mostly what we're doing," Favreau teases.
And, of course, you can't have another "Iron Man" without touching on that other Iron Man.
"We're figuring out [War Machine]," Favreau promises. "We're talking to Terrence to see if he can take some time out of his new life as a musician to be War Machine. I think Terrence and the character of Rhodey were smaller in the first movie than we had anticipated. But it does set the table very well for this character."
War Machine, the Mandarin and the Avengers? Throw an excessively drunk Tony Stark in the mix and that's one hangover we can't wait to nurse.