Don Cheadle says Marvel gave him 2 hours to agree to a 6-movie deal while he was at his ‘kid’s laser tag birthday party’


  • Marvel Studios only gave Don Cheadle two hours to decide if he wanted to sign a six-picture deal.

  • Cheadle was at his “kid’s laser tag birthday party” when the offer came through.

  • The star replaced Terrence Howard as Lt. James Rhodes/War Machine in “Iron Man 2.”

“Iron Man” kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe way back in 2008, and it starred Terrence Howard as Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) best friend and confidant, Lt. James Rhodes. But when Marvel Studios only offered the actor $1 million to return for the sequel, Howard chose not to return, later claiming that Downey Jr. took his paycheck.

Thankfully, Marvel found a solid replacement for the star: Don Cheadle. The “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Hotel Rwanda” actor has played Rhodey (aka War Machine) in seven movies, as well as appearances in two Disney+ shows: “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” and “What If…?”

But speaking to GQ about his career, Cheadle explained that the studio only gave him two hours to agree to a six-picture deal ahead of “Iron Man 2.”

The actor recalled that he was at a birthday party for one of his children when the call came through.

Cheadle said: “I was at my kid’s laser tag birthday party. They called me and said, ‘This is what’s happening and we’re giving you the offer. If you don’t say yes then we’re going to the next person. This is going to happen very fast. Why don’t you take an hour and decide if you want to do it.'”

 

The actor explained that he wasn’t told much about what projects he’d be in aside from a few “Avengers” movies.

He said: “‘It’s going to be these Avengers and this is what it is, so you have to say yes or no.'”

The studio also didn’t tell him what he could expect from War Machine’s arc in the MCU, saying: “‘We don’t know any of that but this is what it is so you’ve got an hour.'”

Cheadle said that he talked through the offer with his wife while they played laser tag, as well as his agent, before accepting the offer.

“So we played laser tag for two hours and I was talking to my wife and we thought about it and talked to my agent and tried to get as much information as we could.”

Although Rhodey is a full-fledged Avenger, he’s always been Iron Man’s sidekick, but he’s soon set to lead his own movie, “Armor Wars.”

The star also teased what to expect from the 2024 movie, saying: “In every successive film, he’s coming more and more out of Tony’s shadow and becoming his own person. But we still haven’t explored who he is and really dug into that yet. That’s what the movie is for.”

Read the original article on Insider



Source link