At the beginning of the month, Jon Favreau announced San Diego Comic-Con information to his MySpace Iron Man group. Among these announcements, he spilled the beans a little on some super-secret casting information: I've read that Sam Jackson and Hilary Swank are Shield agents and that I myself play a Vegas security guard. There is no truth to any of these rumors. (Well, maybe one is true.)
It turns out that Favreau was either playing with us, or playing with the truth, because it turns out that Samuel L. Jackson and Hilary Swank both will be making appearances in Favreau’s Iron Man, confirmed by MTV in an interview with Marvel producer Avi Arad earlier this week. Arad seemed frustrated and a tad bit annoyed that the news of Swank and Jackson’s cameos had gotten out. Apparently Jackson’s appearance (as S.H.I.E.L.D. head Nick Fury) was supposed to be the biggest secret of all. Sadly for Arad, the news has been out for quite a while, and half of it was leaked by Favreau himself.
So Arad has confirmed Swank’s appearance in the movie, but Favreau said Hilary Swank being an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t true, so who could she play? Rumors run from former love interest of Tony Stark (Iron Man himself), Bethany Cade, to enemy of Iron Man, Black Widow, who does run with S.H.I.E.L.D. from time to time.
Arad did confirm that Jackson and Swank’s appearances were part of Marvel’s plan to start making the movies a little more like the comic book version of the Marvel Universe, where characters mix into other stories occasionally. When the rumors of Jackson as Nick Fury started rolling, the idea mentioned was that he would be appearing in several movies, helping set up an Avengers flick that would combine a lot of Marvel’s solo ventures.
Will we find out more about Iron Man later this week? Undoubtedly, yes. Will we find out who Swank is playing? Possibly not until Iron Man actually hits theaters. It’ll be fun speculating in the meantime, however.
