Latino Review have received some con­cept art in the post claim­ing to be Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash in Iron Man 2. The style of the image is inline with con­cept designs, the Rourke-ness and details are non-distinct, some­thing a faker prob­a­bly wouldn’t do. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s the real deal or not.

One more rumor to throw into the mix, from the same guy that said Garry Shan­dling would be Sen­a­tor Stern, we now hear that Gary Old­man was spot­ted on set. One rumor, which I believe is just spec­u­la­tion, is that Old­man will be play­ing Howard Stark, Tony’s father. It was pre­vi­ously thought that Tim Rob­bins would be play­ing this role.

Update: Gary oldman’s man­ager, Dou­glas Urban­ski, he posted the fol­low­ing at SHH:
“Mr. Old­man did not visit the set of Iron Man and there are cur­rently no plans for him to appear in the film.”

MTV recently quizzed Robert Downey Jr. about a poten­tial Pep­per Potts (Gwyneth Pal­trow), Black Widow (Scar­lett Johans­son) and Tony Stark love tri­an­gle in the Iron Man sequel. He responded, “Heck yeah, Wouldn’t you?” — MTV claims this is con­fir­ma­tion of said plot point, whereas it could just be Downey Jr. hav­ing a bit of fun — I’ll opt to clas­sify this lit­tle one as rumor for now.

Favreau had pre­vi­ously ruled out par­tic­i­pa­tion in Marvel’s Avengers movie due to their aggres­sive sched­ul­ing — Marvel’s orig­i­nal release date was set for May 2011, one year after the sched­uled Iron Man 2 release, which would sim­ply make things impos­si­ble. That release date has since been pushed back to May 2012, putting an extra year in The Avengers devel­op­ment cycle. Favreau has pre­vi­ously expressed an inter­est in helm­ing The Avengers movie and com­bined with the relaxed sched­ul­ing opens the door to an inter­est­ing rumor. New spy ‘Fuzzy Dun­lop’ spills the beans to AICN:

–Avengers is delayed a year because of financ­ing issues but also because the plan is for Favreau to helm it. Every­body here loves the guy and he wants to do it, but it would have been impos­si­ble for him to do before the date change given his Iron Man 2 com­mit­ments. Also partly the rea­son why he agreed to do the Stark sequel on such an accel­er­ated sched­ule was so he could get given first dibs on this. It would still be a pun­ish­ing sched­ule for him, so hes not firmly con­firmed yet, but he is cer­tainly the pre­sump­tive direc­tor at this point.

- Iron Man starts rehearsals in a few days, which is why the cast­ing is finally com­ing together so quickly.

[…]

Call me Fuzzy Dunlop

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”.