Six months have passed since Tony Stark has defeated his former friend, Obidah Stane aka the Iron Monger and he has publicly revealed his identity to the world. Tony is facing many issues with his life, such as using palladium for his arc reactor which is causing serious problems towards his health and a rival inventor named Justin Hammer wants to put Stark Industries out of business so that he can become the top inventor. Tony's recklessness is reaching its breaking point for him when his friendship with Rhodey at risk and his love for Pepper in serious jeopardy. However, Tony is soon faced with another issue when Ivan Vanko aka Whiplash begins to seek revenge on him for getting his late father, Anton dismissed from Stark Industries by Howard many years ago. With the stakes held high for Tony, he must form new alliances with Natasha Romanoff and Nick Fury, who are both agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to defeat Hammer and Vanko once and for all.
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Before Scarlett Johansson signed on, Emily Blunt was in serious talks for the Black Widow role but had to bow out because of a scheduling clash with Gulliver's Travels, a film that ended up flopping domestically anyway.
The script is credited entirely to actor Justin Theroux, who's better known these days for The Leftovers. This remains the only film he's ever written completely on his own, though he did share a co-writing credit on Tropic Thunder alongside Robert Downey Jr.
The storyboards for the movie were drawn up by Genndy Tartakovsky, the creative mind behind Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack, who'd go on to direct the Hotel Transylvania films.
Getting Jackson locked in as Nick Fury for another appearance wasn't guaranteed, and the negotiations that followed led to him signing an unprecedented nine-picture deal with Marvel to secure his future in the franchise.
Garry Shandling's blustering Senator Stern character got his surname as a tip of the hat to radio host Howard Stern, according to Jon Favreau himself.
The production originally planned to film the Monaco Grand Prix sequence on location before that year's actual race, but F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone pulled the offer, so the crew ended up building their own racetrack set in a studio parking lot in Downey, California instead.
The little dance Justin Hammer does before showing off his drone army at the Expo wasn't scripted at all, it's something Sam Rockwell does off camera to get himself into character, and Favreau just let the cameras roll.
