Quint from AICN had a chance to visit the Iron man pro­duc­tion offices, where he learned details of Iron man’s plot arc and cast­ing, orig­i­nally cho­sen to span a tril­ogy (isn’t every­thing these days?).

The biggest and best news is that this film is one of three. That’s right. Favreau is build­ing a three-film arc, with all the actors signed for all three of them. The impres­sion I got was that he’s going to make this first one fairly stand-alone, but con­tain­ing threads that will be con­tin­ued in future films, throw­ing in lit­tle hints at what’s to come, some set-ups that will pay off later in the story. I don’t know if screen­writ­ers Hawk Ostby, Mark Fergus(CHILDREN OF MEN), Matt Hol­lowway and Arthur Mar­cum are script­ing all three or just have a detailed out­line for the next cou­ple of movies, but I like that they’re already think­ing ahead.

This three pic­ture plan has been planned since the begin­ning and played a large role in cast­ing… I don’t know if it’ll be in the first film (I’m guess­ing not), but Jim Rhodes as played by Ter­rence Howard WILL be War Machine and that was a key fac­tor in cast­ing Howard. In fact, Favreau said he loved hear­ing the spec­u­la­tion when Howard was first rumored, peo­ple already accept­ing him as Tony Stark. He’s a great actor and a com­mand­ing one. He’ll be able play through the armor.