Don Cheadle Had Two Hours To Decide Whether To Sign A Six-Movie Deal With Marvel: "I Was At My Kid's Birthday Party"
Don Cheadle had just two hours to decide if he wanted to sign a six-movie contract with Marvel.
The 58-year-old star made his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) n 2010's Iron Man 2 as James Rhodes/ War Machine, a role previously played by Terrence Howard.
Recalling the day he got the part in a GQ interview, Cheadle said, "I was at my kid's laser tag birthday party. They called me and said, 'This is what's happening and we're giving you the offer. If you don't say yes then we're going to the next person. This is going to happen very fast. Why don't you take an hour and decide if you want to do it.'
"It was a six-movie deal! In an hour I have to decide?"
Cheadle revealed how he quizzed Marvel on what the other five movies would be but was given limited information.
The Ocean's Eleven star said of the studio's reply: "It's going to be these Avengers and this is what it is, so you have to say yes or no."
When Cheadle enquired about the trajectory of his character, he was told: "We don't know any of that but this is what it is so you've got an hour.
"So we played laser tag for two hours and I was talking to my wife and we thought about it and talked to my agent and tried to get as much information as we could."
Needless to say, Cheadle inked the deal and the rest is history. In the video interview, Cheadle shared how much he's looking forward to Rhodes stepping up to the plate in the upcoming Armour Wars movie. "In every successive film, he's coming more and more out of Tony [Stark]'s shadow and becoming his own person. But we still haven't explored who he is and really dug into that yet. That's what the movie is for."
Cheadle accepted the role, which threw him into the world of CGI and green-screen filmmaking. The actor said that Marvel isn’t so far off from more dramatic fare at its core, explaining, “You’re trying to do the same thing always, which is to try and create circumstances for your character to step into inside your own head so that you believe what it is you’re doing, and then the audience can believe.”
Cheadle is currently in Netflix's apocalyptic dramedy White Noise and will appear in Marvel's Secret Invasion later this year on Disney+.
Watch Cheadle's GQ interview here:
— BANG SHOWBIZ
Photos: TPG News/Click Photos
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