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?

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.

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.