Don Cheadle only had two hours to decide if he wanted to join Marvel and sign a six-movie deal…while he was at his kid’s birthday party!
Don Cheadle may not be one of the original six Avengers, but he’s been a mainstay of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for over 12 years. The actor made his debut as James “Rhodey” Rhodes, aka War Machine, in Iron Man 2 in 2010, succeeding Terrence Howard.
As Variety reports, Don Cheadle looks back on his early days in the franchise in a new retrospective interview with GQ and how Marvel only gave him two hours to decide if he wanted to join Iron Man 2 and sign a six-year contract. films with the studio.
I was at my kid’s laser tag birthday party. They called me and said, ‘Here’s what’s happening and we’re making the offer to you. If you don’t say yes, we move on to the next person. It will happen very quickly. Why not take an hour and decide if you want to do it.’ It was a six-movie deal! I have to decide in an hour?
Wanting to know more, he then asked Marvel what the five additional films would be, to which the studio replied, “It will be these Avengers and that’s how it is, so you have to say yes or no.And as to what her character’s trajectory would be, the studio was pretty clear: “We don’t know any of that, but that’s how it is so you have an hour.”
In the end, it wasn’t until the actor explained that he was at his child’s birthday party that Marvel extended the deadline… to two hours!
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 possible.
The rest you know: Don Cheadle obviously accepted the role opposite Robert Downey Jr., a role which then propelled him into the world of CGI and green screen cinema, a process which, according to him, does not change not the traditional dramatic process.
You always try to do the same thing, which is to try to create circumstances where your character can get into your own head so that you believe what you’re doing, and the audience can believe.
THE FUTURE OF WAR MACHINE
After nearly 13 years as an MCU actor, Don Cheadle is gearing up to direct the studio’s next Armor Wars film, centered around his character, War Machine. He said of this:In each successive film, he increasingly steps out of Tony’s shadow and becomes his own person. But we still haven’t explored who he is and we haven’t really dig into that yet. That’s what the movie is for.”
Check out Don Cheadle’s GQ interview in full below: