Actor and filmmaker Jon Favreau changed the world cinema considerably when he helmed the 2008 Marvel movie Iron Man, thereby ushering in the Iron Man film series and the Marvel Cinematic Universe with it. The feature became a huge blockbuster and was also single-handedly responsible for resurrecting the career of its lead star, Robert Downey Jr.
While Iron Man was trying to get made within the Marvel company since 1990s, it was in 2006 that the Studios signed Favreau to direct the first movie. Now he wanted Robert to be cast in the titular role, which faced some opposition at first, but the dust finally settled down and the work began. At that time, when all this was happening, Marvel was hardly anywhere to be seen on the big screen. It was the DC era, or at least The Batman era, thanks to Christopher Nolan’s very successful Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). That’s all people talked about, and waited for, in terms of a sequel.
Speaking about it during Netflix’s The Chef Show, Jon Favreau said, “It was the Batman world, Batman Begins was huge. Even in our success, we were still second fiddle. It was really at Comic Con (that things happened), after we showed the footage and Robert showed up…if we did everything right for the next year…the wave cresting and then surfing the wave.”
Robert Downey Jr, who was a guest on Favreau’s show, explained that they were hesitant about coming in so soon after the success of those Nolan films: “It’s not like we wanted to come out within two weeks, we wanted to come out in a different season. We wanted that much space to maybe have a shot.”
And what a shot they had; Iron Man ended up raking in almost 600 million dollars at the box office, received two Oscar nominations and once again established Robert Downey Jr as one of Hollywood’s favourite stars.
Jon Favreau also directed Iron Man 2 for Marvel, and both he and Downey have remained fast friends since. Downey also made a cameo in the 2014 Favreau directorial Chef, which was both a critical and commercial success.