Don Cheadle, an actor who will play James Rhodes/War Machine and who will star in this year’s Armor Wars film, has revealed during an interview that he had only two hours to decide whether or not to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As you will recall, Cheadle made his debut in the role in Iron Man 2, filling in for Terrence Howard who had played Rhodey in the first film in the saga.
Back in the day Marvel stated that they had long wanted to collaborate working with the current face of War Machine, but it was apparently more of a “take it or leave it.”
“I was at my son’s birthday party,” Cheadle recounted. “They called me and said ‘this is what’s happening and we’re offering you the part, but if you don’t say yes we’ll move on to the next one. This is going to be very quick, so why don’t you take an hour to decide if you’re up for it?’ This was a six-film contract and I had an hour to decide?”
While the actor knew about Iron Man 2, he was not given any concrete details at the time about the other films he was to be a part of, except for some vague information that the Avengers was involved. Given an extra hour to decide, it was spent talking to his wife and agent.
How we know, considering the extraordinary success of Marvel productions, Cheadle has made the right choice. “In each new movie Rhodey comes out of Tony’s shadow more and more to become a standalone character, but we haven’t explored who he really is yet and that’s what will happen in Armor Wars.”
