For many years, the subject of Terrence Howard being replaced by Don Cheadle as the MCU’s James “Rhodey Rhodes aka War Machine after 2008’s Iron Man introduced the character has been the stuff of internet memes for years. Proof of how longstanding the issues is came in a recent moment when Cheadle was asked by GQ whether he had “Aunt Viv’d” Howard for the role – a reference to the replacing of Aunt Viv in Will Smith series The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Cheadle responded:
"I 'Aunt Viv'd' him? I did not move Terrence out of a role. He was not... they had decided that they weren't... that was not happening. Then it was an open part. I was at my kid's laser tag birthday party and they called me and said, 'This is what's happening. We're giving you the offer. If you don't say yes, we're going to the next person. This is gonna happen very fast.' So they said, 'Why don't you go ahead and take an hour and decide if you want to do it.'
It was a six-movie deal. I was like, 'In an hour I have to decide? What are the other movies' They're like, 'It's gonna be these Avengers, it's gonna be these many Iron Mens, this is what it is, so you're gonna have to say yes or no if you're in or out.' Like, 'What's the trajectory of the character gonna be?' They're like, 'We don't know any of that, but this is what it is. So, you've got an hour.' I said, 'I'm at my kid's laser tag birthday party.' They're like, 'Oh, take two hours. Take two hours,' So, we played laser tag for two hours and I was talking to my wife and we just kind of thought about it and talked to my agent and tried to get as much information as we could and we just said we'd do it."
Will Armor Wars Be A Disney+ Series or a Movie?
There have been previous conflicting reports as to what form Don Cheadle’s own Armor Wars story will take in the MCU. Originally announced as a Disney+ six part series, the thought behind the project changed in the last few months and now it looks like the project will be realized in a theatrical movie release instead. While there has been little revealed about where in the Marvel release schedule this will fit, Cheadle previously said that the film will certainly be true to its source material.
“If you know anything about the lore, and you’ve read the comic books, you understand that it’s a series that was built around Tony’s Stark Tech getting out and Rhodey taking it on to get this tech back from the wrong hands, the bad actors whose hands it is in. As Marvel does, it’s also an opportunity to take the mythology and tip it on its head a little bit and come up with different ways to tell the story, so it’s doing that and has done that in spades.”