Jon Favreau has released the first image from the Iron Man 2 set, show­ing him­self and cin­e­matog­ra­pher Matthew Liba­tique stand­ing amongst the build­ing work that is Tony Stark’s house. Despite the early stages of the set con­struc­tion, the style of Stark’s house can already be spot­ted in the cir­cu­lar ceil­ing pan­els and styl­ish steps.

Via Com­ing Soon

This is more like it! Some pos­i­tive cast­ing news from the world of Iron Man 2. Accord­ing to the Hol­ly­wood Reporter Samuel L. Jack­son has signed up as Nick Fury for a whop­ping NINE movies! Jack­son had pre­vi­ously hinted that nego­ti­a­tions between Mar­vel and him­self were not going smoothly, even sug­gest­ing “Maybe I won’t be Nick Fury”.

Jack­son will appear in “Iron Man 2,” “Thor,” “Cap­tain Amer­ica,” “The Avengers”, assorted sequels and a pos­si­ble S.H.I.E.L.D movie.

Spoiler TV have posted details of a new Iron Man 2 cast­ing call, out­lin­ing the need for Mon­go­lian Gang­sters, Russ­ian Guards and Hot Brunettes. The “Male” role is intrigu­ing, very lit­tle detail is pro­vided, /Film spec­u­late the very slight pos­si­bil­ity that this could be the recently vacated Rourke role — rumored to be Whiplash, as well as the “Hot Brunette” being Black Widow — although the chance of this is very slim.

In terms of the plot it looks like Rus­sia, France and Mon­go­lia may all have their place in the sequel.

Iron Man 2 — New Cast­ing Call

[HOT BRUNETTE] Beau­ti­ful, sexy and author­i­ta­tive. Please sub­mit Cau­casian actresses ages 25 — 28.

[MONGOLIAN GANGSTER] Var­i­ous ages.

[FRENCH WAITER] Male, 30’s. Must have authen­tic Monaco accent.

[RUSSIAN GUARDS] Var­i­ous ages. Must speak flu­ent Russian.

[MALE] late 40’s — mid 50’s. Hand­some, intel­li­gent and dynamic. Please sub­mit Cau­casian actors.

[TECHNICIANS] Smart, capa­ble, 20’s. Please sub­mit all ethnicities.

On the red car­pet at a post-Oscars party, and in speak­ing with E!, direc­tor Jon Favreau revealed that Emily Blunt was now offi­cially out of the Iron Man 2 movie due to the sched­ul­ing con­straints brought about by Fox’s Gulliver’s Trav­els — a con­trac­tual oblig­a­tion of Blunt’s. We’ve already com­mented on the Blunt’s pos­si­ble replace­ment — two rumored choices are Scar­lett Johans­son and Eliza Dushku.

Via The Playlist

“Right now, we’re not doing Iron Man 2,” Rourke told us grimly.

That’s the word from Vul­ture at Fash­ion Week (via /Film). We’d pre­vi­ous reported that Rourke play­ing Crim­son Dynamo was ‘inac­cu­rate’ via Downey Jr., but that was pre­sumed a Crim­son Dynamo inac­cu­racy — the lead­ing rumor being that Whiplash would be the replace­ment. We’ve also heard that Rourke was offered only $250k for the role.

It’s not off the cards yet, but it’s head­ing down that path — espe­cially with his new role in Sylvester Stallone’s ‘The Expendables’.

Iron Man 2 really is hav­ing cast­ing and pro­duc­tion night­mares what with Samuel Jack­son not happy with his pay and aban­don­ing the Nick Fury role, Emily Blunt being sched­uled out of play­ing Black Widow, Ter­rence Howard being replaced by Don Chea­dle and Jon Favreau not happy with his pay deal either.

Is it cause enough to spec­u­late that Iron Man 2 is hav­ing fund­ing prob­lems dur­ing the ‘eco­nomic down­turn’, or are they just tight­en­ing their belts a lit­tle too much?

With the stir­ring of Emily Blunt’s film­ing sched­ule caused by Fox’s Gulliver’s Trav­els, it may look like another actress will be brought in to play the sexy Black Widow vil­lain in Iron Man 2.

Ear­lier this week Eliza Dushku showed an inter­est in the role on the Howard Stern show whilst pro­mot­ing Doll­house, strongly sug­gest­ing she had put her name down for the part (via /Film):

“They’re doing Iron Man 2, and I’m so per­fect for the Black Widow char­ac­ter, that they just need to get into it. They need to under­stand… I just learned Russ­ian because I had to play a Russ­ian girl in Dollhouse.”

Today Enter­tain­ment Weekly report that Mar­vel are in talks with sev­eral actresses for an Emily Blunt replace­ment, with Scar­lett Johans­son on the top of the list, although Mar­vel obvi­ously can­not con­firm any­thing at this stage.

MTV sat down with Robert Downey Jr. on the set of his new movie Sher­lock Holmes and quizzed him about the Iron Man sequel.

When it came to Mickey Rourke and his sug­gested role as Crim­son Dynamo Downey Jr. said “that’s actu­ally incor­rect”, giv­ing the impres­sion that said cast­ing announce­ment was pre­ma­ture. An alter­na­tive char­ac­ter that Rourke could be play­ing is Whiplash. To which Downey cryp­ti­cally responded he could nei­ther con­firm or deny those rumors, “the nerd stuff is top drawer security”.

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.