Hey folks, Harry here with a uncatchable fella by the lack of name as Trent... And during the Writer's Conference here in Austin a month or two back, he had a chance to spend some time with Tim McCanlies and chatted a bit about his IRON MAN run... NOW, at the time this conversation was had... Tim McCanlies had done his pitch with Michael Deluca and Avi Arad... but had yet to actually begin writing his script. He was working up his outline and story structure I believe... And though Tim is often times seen about Austin (he lives in the area), since taking on IRON MAN... I've seen him only once, at the recent tour for Austin Film Types at the AUSTIN STUDIOS that are beginning to be outfitted for top of the line film shootings... It wasn't the time or the place to really talk about IRON MAN, but when asked how it was going, he seemed enthusiastic about the film. He seems to see Tony Stark as a cool version of Bill Gates (ummm... wouldn't that be Steve Jobs?) to a degree. A real super-rich technology weaving sort of guy. At another level, Tim seems to have fashioned a story that takes us through quite a bit of the known IRON MAN armor... I just hope that the yellow and red armor with the pointy angular face plate (think about that Randy Bowen sculpture) is in there somewhere. Tim has been saying for quite some time that he would be working Nick Fury and SHIELD into it... and the plotline does seem to focus around stolen Stark Technology being put to no good by an enemy force.... I'm praying that this will be... HYDRA... but maybe that's just me. Well, enough of me... On to the scooper...
Hey Harry!
Just wanted to pass this along since I haven't seen mention of it anywhere on the web.
I'm a (would-be) screenwriter and I attended the Screenwriters Conference down in your home turf of Austin last month. Got a glimpse of you here and there too, as I recall.
Anyway, I got to meet and speak at great length with writer Tim McCanlies ("The Iron Giant", "Bruce Wayne"). During the conversation, the topic of "Iron Man" came up. Although Tim was (and I suspect still is) at the beginning of the writing process on the screenplay, he did make mention of several interesting pieces of info regarding this draft.
First, he revealed that this would of course be an origin story. He also mentioned that the villain in the film would not be the typical "supervillain" that we'd expect from a comic book movie. He intends on making the film very much "true to life" in that all of the technology (armor, weapons) could all be feasible in our current "real" world. Not much in the way of super-heroes or super-powers like we saw in "X-Men". His script would pit our hero against a corporate villain with designs on stealing Stark technologies and exploiting them to the detriment of mankind. I lost track of the "Iron Man" mythos a long time ago and I'd bet that this sort of scenario is already a plot thread in the mythology, but I'll leave that in the hands of the fanboys to decide. McCanlies' intent is to stick to a more "human" story rather than an outrageous, fantastical one.
One more exciting bit of swag that Tim gave up was that he (at the time at least) was "doing all he could to work Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. into the story. He planned "somewhere near the end to see the Heli-Carrier(!) which could, in theory, set-up Nick and his pals for a possible franchise of their own". So there you have it, Harry. This is all an above board, from the horse's mouth, eyewitness account from Tim McCanlies. I imagine you got to chat him up too during the Conference, so you know how mellowed out he is and how much he likes to talk about storytelling.
Again, I haven't seen much about any "Iron Man" news recently and just assumed that what I'd gotten from Tim was already "official" on the web. But maybe not. You decide.
"TRENT THE UNCATCHABLE".
