Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby have been slowly but surely getting a reputation for their screen-writing work. They were partially responsible for the script of Children of Men, and now they're claiming responsibility for Jon Favreau's Iron Man. In a discussion with Film.com, the duo talked about their script-writing process.

Initially unfamiliar with the character, Marvel Comics provided them with an Iron Man bible that chronicled the history of industrialist Tony Stark. How the billionaire, injured and taken hostage, uses his ingenuity, genius and vast fortune to create a suit of mechanized armor. Marvel gave Fergus and Ostby a good deal of flex on the script, but apparently Favreau gave them one absolute directive.

"John wanted it to be more fun," Fergus says. "He didn't want it to be Batman, where he's skulking around, or Jason Bourne and all these angst-ridden heroes. So's [Tony Stark], but he's also a party animal, he's fun, and he deals with his issues by being extroverted, not staying at home, skulking in the mirror."

"What's great about him is, you give him an idea and he takes it three more levels - and usually in front of the camera where you had no idea it was coming," Fergus said about Robert Downy Jr., the film's star. "One of the other things we loved a lot about Iron Man is there's nothing supernatural about him. He's just using his mind to create technology to do what his body can't - to build the ultimate good guy out of the material he used to build bombs with. That's just a great reversal of a guy's psyche."

Fergus also compared the transformation of Tony Stark into a hero to the work they did on Children of Men. Fergus explains, "[Tony Stark's] a real man, trying to recreate himself not physically, but psychologically. [These characters] are really living shallow, horrible lives, and then they have a huge reckoning and have to tear it all down."

Iron Man flies into theatres May 2, 2008.