Speak­ing with Geoff Boucher of the LA Times Samuel L. Jack­son revealed that “some­body else will be Nick Fury or maybe Nick Fury won’t be in it”, adding, “there seems to be an eco­nomic cri­sis in the Mar­vel Comics world.”. This comes despite Jackson’s post-credits final scene appear­ance in Iron Man, donned in trench coat and eye patch, and the Ulti­mate Mar­vel Uni­verse char­ac­ter ‘Ulti­mate Nick Fury’ being a re-imagined ver­sion of Nick Fury (for­merly a white colonel) based on Samuel L. Jack­son, with his permission.

“I saw [’Iron Man’ and ‘Iron Man 2′ direc­tor] Jon Favreau at the Scream Awards and we had a con­ver­sa­tion. He said, ‘I hope things are work­ing out for you because we’re writ­ing stuff for you.’ Then all of a sud­den last week I talked to my agents and man­ager and things aren’t really work­ing that well.”

“There was a huge kind of nego­ti­a­tion that broke down. I don’t know. Maybe I won’t be Nick Fury. Maybe some­body else will be Nick Fury or maybe Nick Fury won’t be in it. There seems to be an eco­nomic cri­sis in the Mar­vel Comics world so [they’re say­ing to me], ‘We’re not mak­ing that deal.’”

It’s pos­si­ble this pub­lic state­ment from Jack­son could be a part of a ploy to get a bet­ter con­tract from Mar­vel Stu­dios, although Jon Favreau and Ter­rence Howard, (Rhodey has now been recast with Don Chea­dle tak­ing on the role), have both out­wardly shown sim­i­lar con­trac­tual and fund­ing issues.