Once upon a time, Marvel was just a fledgling studio who were taking a big risk with 2008’s “Iron Man.” A blockbuster based on a second-tier superhero, and a film led by Robert Downey Jr. who was still rebuilding his career and public image, the movie could’ve gone sideways pretty quickly. Of course, it turned into a megahit, spawned two sequels, and paved the way for the Marvel behemoth that we know today. But according to Jeff Bridges, right up until the last minute, the script was being put into shape.
As part of The Hollywood Reporter’s “Actor Roundtable,” Bridges revealed that before he got in front of the camera to play Obadiah Stane, the screenplay got a complete overhaul with this help.
” ‘Iron Man’ — we read the script, and it wasn’t really right, you know? We had two weeks’ rehearsal, and we basically rewrote the script,” Bridges said. “And the day before we were going to shoot, we get a call from the Marvel guy, saying, ‘Oh, no, no, no. None of this is right.’ So we would muster in my trailer and rehearse while the guys were in the studio tapping their foot, saying, ‘When are they going to come?’ We were still trying to figure out the [scenes] we were going to shoot.”
Well, it turned out fine in the end, but that wasn’t the only blockbuster movie where Bridges saw changes being made on the fly. Sitting at the table with him during the talk is Casey Affleck, and had things gone another way, he would’ve been in “Tron: Legacy” with Bridges.
“I thought one time you would be my son in that thing,” Bridges told Affleck.
“Yeah. I asked them to recast my father, and they wouldn’t do it,” Affleck quipped.
Well, the role went to Garett Hedlund, while Affleck would eventually work with Disney on “The Finest Hours.”
