What the Hell Is Marvel’s Deal with Money?
Between Sin City and The Wrestler, actor Mickey Rourke is probably at the high point of his career. so everyone seems shocked that Variety is reporting that Marvel has offered him the sum of $250,00 to play the Crimson Dynamo (or whoever) in Iron Man 2. Now, $250K isn’t chump change to you and me, but for an actor in Rourke’s position and current heat–who is almost certainly playing one of the two main villains in the movie–this is kind of chump change. More disturbingly,
As /Film very adroitly points out, it’s getting more and more clear that all those reports about Marvel
not ponying up for actors and directors are almost certainly true. First there were the rumors that Marvel was trying to short-change Iron Man director Jon Favreau for the sequel. Most recently, Sam Jackson said Marvel’s having a “recession” where they aren’t paying him a decent wage to reprise his role as Nick Fury. And now Rourke.
What the fuck is going here? Iron Man made over $575 million worldwide, and everyone knows Iron Man 2 is a license to print money. Why is hell is Marvel even fucking around with this?
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.