There are some superhero films you worry about. You greet each casting nugget of news with an anxious chomp of the nails or an anguished tug on the hair until you've got bloody fingers and a bald patch.
Iron Man is not turning into one of those films. In fact, director Jon Favreau is making some smart choices when it comes to the cast for the new Marvel movie. He's already selected quality character thesp Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark and now, confirming the rumours that had been fizzing across the Interweb, he's adding Terrence Howard into the mix.
Howard grabbed attention with his role as Djay in Hustle & Flow, and has also been the best thing in several movies, including the superb Crash and the appalling Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. But with a proper thesp to play off of in Downey Jr, we're hoping he'll shine even brighter.
He's playing Jim "Rhodey" Rhodes, the ace pilot and high-ranking military man who aides Stark in designing and building the power suit that will help him fight evil (in the case of the film, the classic Iron Man villain Mandarin). But what's even more interesting is that it looks like Favreau clearly has his eye on the future - as Rhodes' plotline takes a turn for the troublesome when he acquires his own armoured suit and becomes a menace to Iron Man as War Machine.
"The richness of the role and complexity of the character seemed to mesh perfectly with the type of passion, energy and emotion that Howard brings to all of his projects," Marvel's Kevin Feige enthused to The Hollywood Reporter.
With a February shoot date set, expect Iron Man to smash into our cinemas in May 2008.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
