Iron Man director Jon Favreau talked with Ain't It Cool News at San Diego's Comic-Con about his upcoming film.
Here's highlights:
Ain't It Cool News: Are you going to go for a star for the role of Tony Stark?
JON FAVREAU: I think we're going for... We just hired the casting director last week. We sort of had it narrowed down. We're probably not going to go with a guy who's bigger than the title. Somebody that would overpower the title.
Ain't It Cool News: So, which Stark are you portraying? The mean drunk or the desperately ill or...
JON FAVREAU: I think it starts off as the oblivious arms manufacturer who gets a huge dose of reality when he's taken into captivity and he's a hostage in Afghanistan. I think he starts to understand the ramifications of the way he's been living his wife when he's exposed to that degree of reality and try to play that as real as possible. And, of course, we're going to really explore the injury and how that affects you, not knowin'... Well, it depends how far you go with it. There are certain story lines in the books where he doesn't know if any given day is going to be his last because of this Sword of Damocles hanging over him. And then sometimes you totally forget the fact that he's got a piece of shrapnel workin' its way towards his aorta.
So, we'll have to find the right balance with that.
Regarding the suit: "Yeah, Red and Gold. We're going to start with the Grey and then we're going with the Red and Gold. I think we're going to go circular chest piece and we're definitely inspired by the Adi Granov stuff and he's actually working on the suit design with us.
Ain't It Cool News: So, when you say "start with the grey," you don't mean a grey version of the Red and Gold suit, but the big, clunky dome thing, right?
JON FAVREAU: Yeah. We're going to go low-tech. We're going to have to believe that he built it in captivity. Just the idea that they just sort of brush over in the books, which is... instead of building a bomb, "While I was pretending to build a bomb, I built this war suit, this tech-armor." It's like, "What kind of bomb were you building that looked like that? With eye slits on it and arms." And then they snapped it together at the last minute.
So, I think you gotta go pretty low-tech to help swallow that jagged pill.
Ain't It Cool News: Supporting characters?
JON FAVREAU: Rhodey (James Rhodes), Pepper Potts, Obadiah Stane... those are the core. I think that there's mixtures and fusions of things, but that's what it is. A lot of homework is being done and there will definitely be some layers in there for people who are fans of the books.
Favreau on his film adaptation of John Carter, Warlord of Mars (a pulp hero from Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs that has been adapted for comics): "I want it to be next. I just visited (Edgar Rice Burroughs') grandson and showed all the art work to him and they loved what we were doing. The fact that (IRON MAN) is a Paramount project and (JOHN CARTER) is a Paramount project, I'm really hoping I can sort of segue right from one into the other."
You can read the entire interview here.