The REAL Reason Marvel Fired War Machine

hello it's rhodes sorry hello i said it's wrong speak up please this is rhody aka war machine next time baby i'm only gonna say this once get out this is rhody aka warm gee the former is played by actor and academy award nominee terence howard the latter is played by actor and academy award nominee don cheadle for the remainder of the mcu's run you're probably not all that confused because you probably know that this switch was made look it's me i'm here to deal with it terrance howard was quickly replaced after the first ironman film but you might not know why there's a big happy family fallacy within these big franchises that consistently gets torn down and torn apart by the media when you realize what's going on underneath acting in major motion pictures is a profession in which multi-million dollar contracts are commonplace and with that kind of money moving around friendly may not be the best word to describe what's actually happening behind the scenes tricky contractual language can often give studios complete control over what they pay their actors and leverage becomes a quintessential element in that process money over relationships terence howard was heading into production on iron man fresh off of an academy award nomination for hustle and flow when an actor is nominated for an oscar their value to a project increases dramatically and in turn so usually does their pay rate this is part of the reason actors want to win these awards or at least be in the conversation it's usually not the main reason let's be honest they want to be great actors they're artists sure there's a lot of prestige in winning the highest award and actor can possibly win but having the title of oscar winner on a resume means that they can also charge more for their performances by the time iron man was rolling into production terence howard's rate was set around 3.5 to 4.5 million dollars for that performance this made him one of the highest paid actors in the film and at that time the highest paid actor in the film he was actually paid over six times more than robert downey jr who people forget was kind of making a return to film in a big way his life his trials his career is a whole different story now one of the most famous men in the world was at one time kind of a has been he only made about five hundred thousand dollars for his role in the first film in pure studio onset money iron man went on to be an enormous success it received overwhelming praise from critics and fans alike and it ultimately led to the creation of the largest and most successful cinematic universe of all time when a project like iron man is successful enough to create a franchise it's usually great for everyone involved the directors and producers get bigger budgets for the sequels and the actors usually get a nice pay raise especially when that film grosses over 300 million dollars like the original ironman did normally something like that would mean enormous contracts getting signed and the principal performers holding the pen on the other side of them robert downey jr was rumored to have made 10 million dollars for the second film a pay increase of about 2 000 not to mention he was able to negotiate a back-end deal for even more money based on the revenue of the film at the box office terence howard on the other hand was actually offered a significant decrease in pay from what he was expecting to earn i'm jealous marvel eventually offered only one million dollars to come back as war machine which was far less than the alleged eight million he was supposed to have made for the sequel based on conversations with his agent and the studio it was even less than what he made for the first film so here's where things start to get a little messy and a little muddy it's rumored that iron man director jon favreau was ultimately unhappy with terence tower's performance and spent a lot of time cutting down his scenes in post this isn't great from both a artistic perspective and more pertinently here a financial perspective being that if a studio is going to pay premium dollars for a specific actor based on essentially their name they're expecting that actor to have a relatively large presence in the film to be able to use them for marketing moving forward when producers directors and editors cut down that screen time it makes the value proposition of those contracts seem a little less responsible allegedly john pepper was so dissatisfied with terence howard's performance that he and iron man 2 writer justin thoreau ended up scaling down rhodey's role in the second film altogether under the assumption that howard would be james rose once again once marvel studios found out that the war machine's role was going to be featured in a diminished capacity they came to terence howard's agents with a counter offer to his 8 million contract to be more in line with what they were expecting to pay a supporting actor at the time that one million dollar number one agent's job is to protect the financial interest of their client what likely ended up happening behind the scenes and this is where pure conjecture starts is that his agent and publicist would want to not only ensure that their client was paid in a way that was commensurate with the rest of the leading cast but to make sure that terence howard's future roles would be measured against a larger contract not diminish his potential for financial returns in the future on the next film or the film after that after the dust settled terence howard had essentially walked away from the role due to this financial dispute and was ultimately replaced with don cheadle happily signed on to play war machine and iron man 2 for that million dollars i think i'll take it which one all of it since then it's rumored that don cheadle has amassed a combined total of around 40 million dollars in earnings across his work at the mcu role also landed him an emmy nomination for his performance in the falcon and winter soldier in a 2010 interview with e online howard publicly claimed that he was the one who recommended rdj for the role of iron man but that he ultimately was happy with the way things turned out in the interview he almost takes silk credit for robert downey jr success by saying for me to have recommended him it means all the more so that i help someone get to where they are supposed to go john perros stated that at one time marvel said to him under no circumstances are we prepared to hire robert downey jr for any price so maybe there's something to that but we'll never really know howard would get a little more upset as time went on over the next couple of years you can almost link howard's frustrations directly to the success of marvel films the more successful those films became the more howard lashed out against marvel the media is there any chance you come back and do an adventure for 2013 avengers have made 1.5 billion dollars at the box office and at this time howard took the media once more it was a little more candid in 2013 interview with hollywood.com taryn tower teased the worst thing he had ever witnessed hollywood was iron man killing my career in another interview with vulture.com howard took the drama even further by saying that robert downey jr took the money that was supposed to go to him and pushed him out of the sequel the reality of all this drama is likely much more simple than any of this painted out to be terence howard was being let go from a project for delivering a subpar performance and not wanting to take the ego hit of having a potentially future subpar performance cut down by the studio robert downey jr kept quiet about all this because he didn't want to ruin his opportunity that was almost denied to him because of his previous struggles with addiction and drugs this was a once-in-a-lifetime shot at redemption for him at the end of the day the studio's job is to create the most profitable film possible these films operate on stringent budgets and in the case of terence howard marvel didn't have him in theirs if they continued with him they'd be paying a lot for a character who had a significantly less impactful role in the overall story of the mcu replacing him was nothing more than a business decision that saved the studio tens of millions of dollars now whether or not this business deal was conducted in an ethical manner we'll always be up for debate but we're not here to gossip at the end of the day what you see on screen are people doing a job as much as they're artists they're also employees of the studio once they sign those contracts what does it say about marvel films in general that a replacement like this was so easy for them does something like this create the perception that money becomes more valuable than performance i'm not sure because i'm not entirely sure what jon favreau saw in teren tower's performance that made him in the studio say this isn't working i guess what's important to remember is that not everything in art is fixable and sometimes it's easier and maybe better to just move on that's it for today's episode if you enjoyed this one press the like button down below and on your screen right now should be two more episodes also hit subscribe and hopefully i will see you guys in the next video you

Channel: Nerdstalgic

Views: 3,113,026

Keywords: War Machine, War Machine Terrence Howard, War Machine Don Cheadle, War Machine Iron Man, War Machine Avengers, War Machine Marvel, War Machine Replaced, War Machine Fired, War Machine Iron Man 2, Iron Man, Iron Man Avengers, Tony Stark, Marvel, Marvel Comics, Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU, Marvel Movies, Marvel Disney+, Marvel Series, Marvel Phase 4, Avengers, Avengers Infinity War, Avengers Campus, Avengers Movie, Corridor Crew, New Rockstars, Mr Sunday Movies, Nerdstalgic

Id: Y0l_PAO57hQ

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021