If Tom Cruise had played Iron Man, the movie would have been considerably different, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has revealed why it almost didn’t work out. According to pre-reports, a new chapter from the book MCU:The Reign of Marvel Studios offers some insightful new information about Iron Man, the movie that started the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Cruise was considered for the Tony Stark part back in the 1990s when 20th Century Fox had the Iron Man rights.In the book, Feige states that even a successful company like Fox was unwilling to take a chance on an unproven superhero project because of Cruise’s asking cost at the time. Superhero films were still viewed as a significant risk at the time, maybe made worse by the failure of 1997’s Batman & Robin to receive positive reviews and generate a healthy profit at the box office. Of course, this was all years before the MCU would grow into the worldwide sensation that it is today.
Marvel Studios was therefore unable to pay an A-list actor to play the first Iron Man. After that, Cruise was instantly ruled out of consideration for the final version of the project, which was completed and released in 2008. Then, actors like Jim Caviezel from The Passion of the Christ were seriously entertained; the Marvel book mentioned that the actor who “everyone was rooting for” was Timothy Olyphant from Santa Clarita Diet. It’s also rumoured that director Jon Favreau first preferred Sam Rockwell (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) for the role, but he rapidly changed his mind after speaking with another actor. Robert Downey Jr. was attempting to restart his acting career at this time, following years of drug usage and legal issues. Marvel executives resisted Favreau’s choice of Downey for the Tony Stark character because of his past, believing that Downey’s difficulties in real life only strengthened his suitability for the part. “Jon, I know, felt in his bones that it should be Robert and fought for him to the point of saying, ‘It’s going to be him or it’s going to be me,'” screenwriter Matt Holloway is also cited as saying. After landing the part, Downey went on to create Tony Stark, one of the most well-known characters in pop culture history. In the end, he would appear in 10 different films as the character before calling it quits in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. Fans honoured Downey’s Tony Stark earlier this month on the official anniversary of his MCU demise, demonstrating how adored he is still after all these years.
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