We seem to find ourselves further and further off into the distance when it comes to discussing comic book properties these days. The sequel to The Amazing Spiderman has announced its release date, Man of Steel has shifted to 24 months hence for its release date and although The Avengers is still filming, Robert Downey Jr is already talking about Iron Man 3, which is set for release summer 2013.
Shane Black, the utterly talented screenwriter of Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and writer-director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, is to direct IM3, with Drew Pearce set to lay down the script. RDJ’s comments were pretty cryptic, but he had the following to say about the threequel:-
My sense of it is that we need to leave it all on the field — whatever that means in the end. You can pick several different points of departure for that.
The thing about Shane is that it will be anything but one of those moments, [speaking of the meta-moments spread throughout KKBB] unless we come up with something that is so cheeky and character-driven and perfect that it has to be in the movie.
He’s more than the sum of his parts and he’s also kind of been a sleeper for a long time. We’re not talking much about [the script] right now because Shane is off writing and we talked before that and when we are talking again the talking is going to be over pretty quick [because we’re on the same page]. It’s kind of like we’re fighting on the same side and at the same time we’re circling each other, so it’s all great. It shouldbe great.
Bringing in Shane Black to write and direct ‘Iron Man 3? to me is basically the only transition from Favreau to a ‘next thing’ that Favreau and the audience and Marvel and I could ever actually sign off on. The fun thing is going to be getting Happy in the movie
All we really seem to be able to glean from that is that Drew Pearce is off writing duties and Black will script from scratch himself instead. That is no bad thing in my book; KKBB definitely showed that he had rediscovered his mojo and he clearly knows how to write for male and female characters and in particular fdor RDJ.
So, we don’t know an awful lot more than before, but at least everything is moving forward nicely.
