With Jon Favreau well and truly out of the running for the job of making Iron Man 3, Marvel Studios has begun the search for his replacement in earnest. And one of the directors under consideration? Shane Black.
As of right now, the only step that the Marvel bods have taken is to reach out to Black and invite him in to discuss the idea. There are no formal negotiations taking place, and he’s just one name on what we expect will be a fairly hefty list of candidates.
Still, as names go, he’s a pretty solid one. While his directing CV includes exactly one film, that would be noir tale Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which turned out wonderfully. And while he might have even less effects experience than Favreau had when he got the original gig, Black has been around more than a few blockbusters in his time, given his writing work on the Lethal Weapon franchise, The Long Kiss Goodnight and more. Oh, and he also appeared in RoboCop 3, so he’s dealt with blokes in suits before (probably best we all forget the film happened, though).
And Kiss Kiss also proved that he works well with Robert Downey Jr, since the actor’s superb performance in that film was surely one of the reasons Favreau and Marvel approached him about playing Tony Stark in the first place. So if Black does end up overseeing Iron Man 3, we know that he can already handle the Downey brand of loose-scripting style. We’d also be intrigued to see what he’d do with the Iron Man universe (assuming Marvel gives him any slack, what with their legendary world-building rules).
Marvel has time to make its choice, since the studio is focusing on **The Avengers **right now and **IM 3 **isn't due until 2013. But while nothing may come of the discussions, it’s definitely an intriguing idea. Your thoughts?