"So then if she yanks on it while she's tonguing your butt, that's called a 'rusty trombone.'"

"So then if she yanks on it while she's tonguing your butt, that's called a 'rusty trombone.'"

According to Vulture, Jon Favreau has just told Marvel that he won’t be directing Iron Man 3.  This should come as no surprise to anyone who read the writing on the wall.  No, not “No Fat Chicks” and your sister’s phone number, I mean the rumors of a Marvel/Favreau beef that have been going around since this summer.  The scuttlebutt was that Marvel pressured Favreau into including that whole Avengers subplot in Iron Man 2, and Favreau resented them for it. True or not, that scene with the Captain America shield was really stupid.

One informed source hears that [Favreau] was frustrated with Marvel’s urge to stuff more of their in-house heroes into the next film in the wake of The Avengers. In a recent interview with MTV News, Favreau explained that based on his conversations with Marvel Studios executives, he had no clarity as to what a third Iron Man film would even be about. “In theory, Iron Man 3 is going to be a sequel or continuation of Thor, Hulk, Captain America and Avengers,” said Favreau at the time, “This whole world … I have no idea what it is. I don’t think they do either, from conversations I’ve had with those guys.”

Still other industry insiders look at Favreau’s growing price tag and speculate that he was getting too expensive for the frugal Marvel and its equally cost-conscious parent company, Disney. In fact, one Hollywood player familiar with Marvel’s playbook theorizes that the company had been pushing a confusing and packed vision of the third film as a tactic to provoke Favreau into leaving the project.

Whoa, settle down there, Captain Conspiracy, it turns out there were a couple Jews in the second tower.

Favreau, after all, is said to have received $10 million for the Iron Man sequel; it’s unclear what he’d be seeking for a third film, but reps familiar with these sorts of gross participation deals tell Vulture that he likely would command $12 million to $15 million up front, plus a 15 percent percent of the gross after the film recouped.

Regardless of why, we’re told that Marvel quietly began the process of finding a director to replace Favreau last night. But Marvel’s task is complicated by the fact that Downey Jr. has both contractually negotiated director approval and is currently the hottest leading man in Hollywood with first pick of dozens of “go” movies around town.

Let it die.  The fact that the first one worked was kind of a fluke anyway, considering they didn’t even really have a script.  By the time Marvel rushes this one into production with barely a script outline, twelve Avengers subplots (six of them played by Samuel Jackson), and a no-name director they can push around, the novelty of watching Robert Downey improvise will have long since worn off.

…Unless he’s in black face.

[And if you're desperate for a Favreau-directed movie about rocket hands , there's always Cowboys and Aliens]