And direc­tor Jon Favreau has been twit­ter­ing again, to our delight, updat­ing through­out the first day with a num­ber of sta­tus reports:

Going over script with RDJ one last time before shooting.

On my way to set. Not much sleep, as one could imag­ine. First day at camp. Very excited.

Lunch! Boy it’s great to be back at work. Many famil­iar faces in cast and crew. I am so blessed to do what I love with won­der­ful people.

First day went great. I’ve never worked on a sequel before. It’s like we picked up where we left off.

He also posted a cou­ple of shots to stoke our excite­ment. The first shows “no cam­era on set”, which I guess Favreau is exempt from, being the direc­tor and all. I am enjoy­ing this new trend of tid­bit social movie report­ing from those behind the scenes.

In Decem­ber we revealed that the Iron Man 2 pro­duc­tion would come under the work­ing title, “Rasputin”. With film­ing set to begin today it’s time to look out for said pro­duc­tion crew.

The City of Pasadena is one such place, they report that “Iron Works Pro­duc­tions LLC” will be work­ing on “Rasputin” on 4/5 and 4/6 at 200 Euclid Avenue S. That cor­re­sponds to the Masonic Temple.

Google Maps Location

Jon Favreau has been twit­ter­ing again, this time reveal­ing that the full cast has now arrived in LA and that shoot­ing shall begin on Monday:

More train­ing. Start shoot­ing Mon­day. Last of cast has arrived in LA.

I’m quite enjoy­ing Favreau’s twit­ter­ing, it gives me that strange per­sonal win­dow into the Iron Man 2 pro­duc­tion cycle. Recent tweets of note to Iron Man followers,

Rehearsed today with Gwyneth. She looks ripped. I gotta read GOOP and see what the hell she’s eating.

Great rehearsal today with Gwyneth, RDJ [Robert Downey Jr.] and Don Cheadle.

Rehearsed today with Mr. Rock­well. http://​twit​pic​.com/​2​h​f93

Sam Rock­well is play­ing the multi-billionaire vil­lain Justin Ham­mer:

Jon Favreau has updated his Twit­ter account to announce the Iron Man 2 shoot­ing sta­tus (we’re on Twit­ter too),

Rehearsals began today on Iron Man 2. Three weeks from shoot­ing and my life is no longer my own. I for­got how over­whelm­ing this process is.

Mean­while, AICN’s Capone has caught up with Favreau to ques­tion him about the recent spate of cast­ing announce­ments, no more big sur­prises coming:

Capone: There has been a lot of IRON MAN 2 news fly­ing around in the last few days. What’s true? What’s not?

Jon Favreau: I can’t con­firm any cast­ing stuff because there have been no announce­ments made, but let me say that the peo­ple that have deals that should all be final­ized in our cast this week, I should hope…it’s a dif­fer­ent process being that Mar­vel is not a big stu­dio and they don’t really have the infra­struc­ture to get things out there; it’s not as stream­lined as a stu­dio, so I apol­o­gize to the fans for not being able to say things as quickly as pos­si­ble. But they really want to have legal pro­tec­tions and not offi­cially say things until every­thing is done. But, I’m very excited about the peo­ple that we have. There are no big sur­prises in cast­ing com­ing that I can fore­see [laughs]. It’s going to be a really, really good group of peo­ple and a story that takes advan­tage of our cast but is in inun­dated and doesn’t get too com­plex because of the num­ber of new peo­ple that we’re adding, which is always a tar pit for these super­hero movies, you always have to make sure that you add the char­ac­ters in a smart way.

Capone: Are you qui­etly relieved that Samuel L. Jack­son has signed on to play Nick Fury for a bil­lion movies or some­thing like that?

JF: [laughs] I wasn’t wor­ried that Sam sign­ing a nine-picture deal was going to hold up my movie, no. That would have been really bizarre if that had happened.

Mar­vel Stu­dios have announced a slew of new super­hero movie releases dates in the forth­com­ing years — of most inter­est to this crowd are Spider-man 4, now set to appear in screens nation­wide on May 6th 2011 and an updated release for Iron Man 2 — now hit­ting the­aters on May 7th 2010 (pre­vi­ously April 20th).

Also of sig­nif­i­cant inter­est are the Thor, Cap­tain Amer­i­can and The Avengers movie dates which have been updated to:
Thor — June 17, 2011
The First Avenger: Cap­tain Amer­ica — July 22, 2011
The Avengers — May 4, 2012

“This new sched­ule strongly sequences Marvel’s movie debut dates, big screen char­ac­ter intro­duc­tions and momen­tum. It max­i­mizes the vis­i­bil­ity of our sin­gle character-focused films, lead­ing to the highly antic­i­pated release of the multi-character ‘The Avengers’ film in 2012,” said David Maisel, Chair­man, Mar­vel Studios.

Via SHH

And our sec­ond major announce­ment of the week — Scar­lett Johans­son has been con­firmed as The Black Widow in Iron Man 2, replac­ing the sched­uled out Emily Blunt. This con­firms the rumors we reported on Valen­tines day.

This comes via Nikki Finke’s Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Daily, although unlike the recent Rourke deal, it seems like Johans­son did get ‘low-balled’ into this and a whole host of other Mar­vel movies, includ­ing The Avengers. Finke also reveals that Johans­son had pre­vi­ously screened for the part and didn’t get it.

I’ve already posted my scoop that Mickey Rourke will play the Russ­ian vil­lain in Iron Man 2 in a Mar­vel Stu­dios deal that started out low­ball and went up a lot. Now I’m told that Emily Blunt won’t be in the sequel and Black Widow will now be played by Scar­lett Johann­son. (Inter­est­ing because Scar­lett actu­ally screen-tested for the role and didn’t get it.) But I hear that, unlike Mickey’s money, the deal for her is “just the oppo­site, a ter­ri­ble deal made by CAA,” one of my insid­ers says. “It’s as bad as any deal that I’ve heard. It’s low­ball money. And it ties her to count­less movies, includ­ing that ensem­ble The Avengers, which is what makes this bru­tal for a lot of actors.”

How do you feel about Scar­lett get­ting the role? Although very tal­ented I do not see her fit­ting the part of the Black Widow — it just doesn’t feel right some­how; but I am per­fectly happy to be proved wrong.

Excel­lent, another fine actor con­firmed for Iron Man 2. Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Daily has con­firmed the news that Mickey Rourke shall appear in the Iron Man sequel — with a quote sig­nif­i­cantly higher than the low $250k we’d pre­vi­ously reported (and the cause of the cast­ing wor­ries). This news is par­tic­u­larly encour­ag­ing given Rourke’s recent com­ments — “Right now, we’re not doing Iron Man 2.”

I just heard that ICM has scored its sec­ond cast­ing deal for Marvel’s Iron Man 2. After at first being low-balled by the stu­dio to the tune of $250K, Rourke has signed on for the role of the Russ­ian vil­lain in the sequel after his agent David Unger got the quote up to a “sig­nif­i­cant” level despite this pun­ish­ing eco­nomic cli­mate where the stu­dios are tak­ing advan­tage of tal­ent. (No won­der Mickey kept thank­ing Unger so pro­fusely in accep­tance speeches for the BAFTA, Golden Globes, Spirit, and other awards.) But don’t expect Mar­vel to con­firm any of this: they won’t until all the i’s are dot­ted and t’s crossed on the con­tracts. I can also tell you that Sony was con­sid­er­ing hir­ing Mickey to play the vil­lain in Spider-Man 4.

Update: Vari­ety has added that Rourke will play Whiplash per­haps with some ele­ments of Crim­son Dynamo. Rourke has also met with Justin Ther­oux and Jon Favreau and has had some involve­ment in his character’s development.

Next up — a Black Widow cast­ing announcement?