Vari­ety are report­ing that Emily Blunt has been cast oppo­site Jack Black in Fox’s upcom­ing Gulliver’s Trav­els. When Blunt played a char­ac­ter in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, Fox held out an option on the actress as part of her deal — looks like they are call­ing this in for the Gul­liver movie, set to film in the UK in late March, with Iron-man 2 set to start mid April.

This sched­ul­ing over­lap is being inves­ti­gated by Blunt’s reps for her to play both parts, they are cur­rently opti­mistic that a sched­ul­ing agree­ment can be met.

The money rumors keep rolling in when it comes to Iron Man 2, this time new vil­lain star Mickey Rourke has been handed a low-ball offer from Mar­vel, report Vari­ety:

Then there is come­back kid Mickey Rourke, who is poised to fol­low his Golden Globe-winning per­for­mance in “The Wrestler” with an offer to play the main vil­lain in “Iron Man 2″ — but at a low­ball open­ing offer of $250,000 from Mar­vel; Marvel’s tac­tics have already prompted Samuel L. Jack­son to swear off play­ing Nick Fury because of a sim­i­larly low offer.

Maybe we’ll see a return of stop motion effects too?

Some good news fol­low­ing the recent Nick Fury rev­e­la­tions, Vari­ety report that the British born Emily Blunt is the fron­trun­ner in talks to play Natasha Romanoff in Iron Man 2, the super-sexy Black Widow spy.

She’s a Soviet super­spy who dou­bles as Black Widow, a beauty in a skintight black cos­tume enhanced by high-tech weaponry.

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.

Vari­ety are report­ing that Mickey Rourke and Sam Rock­well are in talks with Para­mount Pic­tures con­cern­ing the roles of two vil­lains in the Iron Man sequel.

Mickey Rourke (Sin City, The Wrestler) is set to play the big bad­die of the movie, Crim­son Dynamo, “a heav­ily tat­tooed Russ­ian arms dealer. He’s con­sid­ered to be an evil ver­sion of Iron Man because he bat­tles the super­hero in a nuclear-powered suit of armor.”.

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter are sug­gest­ing that Sam Rock­well will play Justin Ham­mer, “a multi­bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man and a rival of indus­tri­al­ist Tony Stark”.

Story of the orig­i­nal Crim­son Dynamo from Wikipedia — pos­si­ble plot spoil­ers below:

The first Crim­son Dynamo was also the cre­ator of the armor: Pro­fes­sor Anton Vanko. A Soviet sci­en­tist of Armen­ian birth with a PhD, Vanko was the world’s fore­most expert on elec­tric­ity. He built a suit that was wired up to per­form elec­tric mir­a­cles, mak­ing him a human dynamo. The Crim­son Dynamo battle-suit allowed him to con­trol elec­tric­ity in all of its forms, allow­ing him to fire dev­as­tat­ing bolts of elec­tric­ity. It also allowed him to fly.

Vanko was a vain and cocky man, but he redeemed him­self in the end. In their first encounter, the Crim­son Dynamo bat­tled Iron Man. After being tricked by Iron Man (who made him believe that his Soviet han­dlers were going to kill him though ear­lier Vanko’s supe­rior implied he was going to kill Vanko, any­way), Vanko defected to the U.S. and went to work for Tony Stark as one of his chief sci­en­tists. Soon the Sovi­ets came to kill him for real. They sent their top agent, the Black Widow [also rumored], and her one-time part­ner, Boris Tur­genev, the lat­ter of whom stole the armor and became the sec­ond Crim­son Dynamo. Vanko died sav­ing Iron Man by fir­ing an unsta­ble exper­i­men­tal laser light pis­tol at Boris, killing him­self as well.

Note the inclu­sion of the Black Widow in this plot arc, a char­ac­ter also rumored to appear in Iron Man 2

Justin Hammer’s back­ground via Wikipedia:

Justin Ham­mer was born in Sur­rey, Eng­land, and later became a cit­i­zen of Monaco. A rival of indus­tri­al­ist Anthony Stark (Iron Man), multi-billionaire busi­ness­man Ham­mer, him­self an indus­tri­al­ist, later became a crim­i­nal financier. Ham­mer uses uneth­i­cal meth­ods. In exchange for fifty per­cent of the prof­its from their crimes, he will pay bail for cos­tumed crim­i­nals and finance the devel­op­ment and replace­ment of their weaponry and equipment.

Crim­son Dynamo

Justin Ham­mer

Latino Review are report­ing that Tim Rob­bins is set to play Howard Stark whilst char­ac­ters Hawk­eye and Black Widow are rumored to make an appear­ance in the Iron Man sequel:

From what I’m told, Tim Rob­bins is going to be play­ing Howard Stark in an impor­tant flash­back sequence that is going to set up the Avengers and Cap­tain Amer­ica films. Jon [Favreau] wanted to get a good actor because he didn’t think the guy who played Howard in the last film could carry such an impor­tant scene.

The scooper goes on,

I’m also told that HAWKEYE and BLACK WIDOW are def­i­nitely in Iron Man 2 and they wont be cameos either.

UGO caught up with Justin Ther­oux recently and quizzed him about the progress of the Iron Man 2 script and the ongo­ing development:

JT: We’ve kind of got a first draft around. You know what I mean? I just got back from Lon­don where I was work­ing with Robert and Kevin Feige. He was out there. We were talk­ing with Robert, who’s out there doing Sher­lock Holmes, he was giv­ing his input and his notes. We’re sort of there. It’s just sort of chug­ging along. The crews, I think, are now start­ing to see what they need to make, and the places that we might be going and all the rest within the story. That’s sort of one of the more excit­ing times.

UGO: So you weren’t involved in the whole Don Cheadle/Terrence Howard…or were and you want to tell me something…

JT: No, I wasn’t. I gen­uinely wasn’t. (laughs)

UGO: There have been reports that the role of War Machine was scaled back and then beefed up.

JT: No, that’s all non­sense. What­ever their rea­son is, I’ll leave that up to Mar­vel. We’re writ­ing the thing, vir­tu­ally the same for Rhodey that we would for any actor. We’re really tak­ing what’s going to be the most inter­est­ing story for the fans, and what are they going to enjoy watch­ing. And who ever’s in that part is going to have to play that part and make it work for Jon (Favreau) and the fans who are watch­ing the movie.

UGO: So the size of the role wasn’t ever changed?

JT: No. God, no.

UGO: So did you have to, or did you try to accom­mo­date Don Cheadle’s act­ing style?

JT: I think that will prob­a­bly be some­thing that comes up…I haven’t met Don, and I think I’m going to in a lit­tle bit and I think once I get a bet­ter sense of his voice and also hear what he has to say about what he likes about the char­ac­ter and just pick his brain a lit­tle bit, then we’ll obvi­ously start to tai­lor it to him. Once he sort of gets more involved in the process then we’ll start taper­ing the length of his character…making it fit just right.

UGO: Everyone’s spec­u­lat­ing about the vil­lain. Are we talk­ing Man­darin? Or Evil DJ?

JT: (laughs) I think it’s Evil DJ. He could be the vil­lain in this movie. I don’t know. I mean, I do know but I’m not going to let that cat out. I’ll let Jon start dis­cussing when he thinks it’s the right time.

UGO: Con­sid­er­ing that everyone’s com­ing together for the Avengers movie, were you ever told that cer­tain things had to be in the story or that things had to go a cer­tain way?

JT: No. I mean, I think we’re all sort of con­scious of the fact that all these people…it is the Mar­vel uni­verse, but that’s really about as far as we’ve been made…they haven’t given us any instruc­tion as far as we want you to do this or we want you to do that. And really it’s not really a they/us kind of envi­ron­ment, the way they work. It’s just a bunch of guys and girls sit­ting in a room, try­ing to come up with stuff and doing what’s right for the movie and what, at the end of the day, is going to be the most inter­est­ing film that can be made. Kind of a fun film. I think once we’re sort of locked on that we’ll be able to think about how we can thread things through. There’s a cou­ple lit­tle things that we’ve been work­ing on, but it’s not that we’ve been tak­ing meet­ings with Avengers peo­ple. It’s not like we’re six screen­writ­ers sit­ting in a room from each movie and think­ing about how we’re gonna work on each other’s things.

UGO: Have you writ­ten Stan Lee’s cameo yet?

JT: No, I don’t think so. (laughs) I don’t know, I don’t know. Jon will anoint him with that cameo, I’m sure.

UGO: Gwyneth Pal­trow is still listed as “rumored”. Is she confirmed?

JT: I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s con­firmed or not…I’m plan­ning like she is there but I have no idea.

UGO: Finally, what voice do you think you bring to the script, to make it dif­fer­ent from the last one?

JT: I’m not really try­ing to bring a dif­fer­ent voice. I’m try­ing to mimic and sing in the same key as the script that was there before. If any­thing, I think I bring a knowl­edge of the way Robert’s mind works. I’ve worked with him once before. Hope­fully I’ve proven I have some mod­icum of cre­ative rela­tion­ship with Jon and Mar­vel. So I really think my job is to work with them and not try and strike any new chords. Of course we want to make the story dif­fer­ent and inter­est­ing. We want the action to be really good. But I think my job is really just to…serve the ulti­mate guy, which is Iron Man.

Just a lit­tle tid­bit for you on Iron Man 2’s devel­op­ments. Pro­duc­tion Weekly are report­ing that Iron Man 2 will be pro­duc­ing under the fake moniker of “Rasputin”, a name that will be for inter­nal use — this is cer­tainly not the title of the sequel.