Favreau on Iron Man


Wizard Magazine and Jon Favreau remanence on the important moments that happened in the development of the upcoming Iron Man flick, which has been all good.

Here the highlights.

One of the major points of interest in this film, in terms of a broad
appeal, was the announcement of Robert Downey Jr. as the lead. What was the
thought process there in casting him?

FAVREAU: When we cast Robert—when he was approved and we got him to be in
the movie and Marvel gave us its okay—it completely freed me because I knew that
I was halfway there to having a movie that I could be proud of. I can’t think of
anyone better than him. He brings a reality, a humor, a panache and a life of
experience where he really feels like there is a lot of Tony Stark in him.
That’s so much better than trying to teach someone to pretend that they are
funny or pretend that they are smart or pretend that they’re talented or pretend
that they’ve lived with fame and lived with all of the challenges and benefits
of it.

For the design of the suit, we know comic artist Adi Granov was involved.
How did that relationship start?

FAVREAU: Adi had actually contacted me through MySpace because I set up a
little group, or actually even before the group, just when I put my [profile] up
he contacted me to be my friend. He said, “I thought that you might want to meet
me. I’m the guy who did all the drawings that you have on your website.” I was
like, “Oh, I would love to talk to you!” He was really excited to get involved.
He was doing some drawings for us. We flew him out here and he met with [our set
artists] and we all sort of collaborated together in finding a suit that could
be made practically, to be worn, so that it wasn’t always a cartoon.

Have you gotten any advice from any other comic movie directors?

FAVREAU: I went to the set of “Spider-Man 3” visiting Sam Raimi, and just
seeing certain things go so slow because they have to and certain things going
really fast, but not getting freaked out when you have 400 people sitting around
waiting for one guy to hang a light [helped]. Coming from independent films,
knowing how to pace it and do it because of being on budget, I’ve figured out
how to do that. This movie, though, is huge. I don’t think that I’ve ever been
on sets like this. I mean, I had a small part in “Batman Forever” and I saw the
Bat-cave and all of that stuff and it was really cool. But even “Daredevil”
wasn’t of this scale. Nothing I’ve been on has been of this scale.

Sounds like he’s confident in what’s he’s doing, and he knows that Rami was spent by the third.