Mark Fergus Interview, Iron Man

MoviesOnline recently caught up with writer/director Mark Fergus ("Children of Men,” "First Snow”) and asked him about writing the screenplay for the upcoming "Iron Man” which is currently in pre-production and slated to start shooting next month for release in 2008.  

When billionaire industrialist and genius inventor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is kidnapped and forced to build a devastating weapon, he uses his intelligence and ingenuity instead to build a high-tech suit of armor and escape his captors. Upon his return to the U.S., he uncovers a plot with global implications and must don his armor and protect the world as the heroic Iron Man based on the Marvel Comics character.

We asked Mark Fergus if he referred to the comics or if he went in with a blank slate. Here’s what he had to tell us:

Mark Fergus: It’s kind of both approaches. It’s the guys who are the Marvel guys. There’s a tremendous motherload of history and detail, and being respected and being considered from the whole history of the project – from creation to yesterday. And then there’s also a tremendous opportunity to look at it, from the outside, as a story that needs to do certain things, and to find out what else could be done, and to not let anything be off limits. It’s kind of the best of both worlds which I think will be great for the fans, but it’s also not going to be just stocking that cage like it has to follow everything because the comics evolved, too.

Everything has been tried in the comics over the years, and they’re taking a really broad approach to ‘what’s the coolest story,’ ‘what’s the most interesting story,’ and anything goes that fits into that – that feels right, obviously not just anything. I think it’s a smart thing, they’re being really open but they’re not going anywhere that fans wouldn’t be totally psyched about. I think it’s the best of both worlds.

And I’m an outsider coming in because I’m not a comic book guy, so I’m learning it from the perspective of someone who hasn’t grown up with the comics; and there are other writers on it who were comic guys. So they’re hitting it from a lot of cool approaches, and Jon [Favreau] is the ringleader, who says ‘This is the movie. Bam!’ And he’s great, by the way. It’s in amazingly deft hands, so he’s a natural story teller and he’s going to really knock it out of the park, I believe. So there you have it.