Don Cheadle has opened up about the time Marvel gave him just two hours to decide on a six-picture deal.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe came to life back in 2008 with the first installation of the Iron Man film series. Terrence Howard starred as Tony Stark's (played by the iconic Robert Downey Jr.) confidant, Lt. James Rhodes.
However, when Marvel Studios only offered to pay Howard $1 million in compensation for starring in the sequel, the actor declined leaving his space to fill if the series was to continue. He later claimed that Downey Jr. was responsible for taking his pay check.
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Thankfully, the film franchise was saved when Marvel chose Don Cheadle as a solid replacement.
Cheadle, who has starred in Oceans Eleven and Hotel Rwanda has also played Rhodey (more commonly known as War Machine) in seven films and two Disney+ shows - The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and What If...?.
In a recent conversation with GQ magazine about his vast career, Cheadle admitted that Marvel Studios only gave him two hours to ponder over a six-movie contract ahead of Iron Man 2.
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Cheadle says that he was at one of his children's birthday parties when the call came through asking him to sign the deal.
"I was at my kid's laser-tag birthday party," he explained to GQ.
"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 has to be - this is going to happen very fast.' So they said, 'Why don't you go ahead and take an hour and decide if you want to do it?'"
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Cheadle said he didn't have much information to go off of about which projects he'd be starring in apart from a few of the Avengers films and said that Marvel told him: "This is what it is, so you kind of have to say yes or no."
The studio also told him that they didn't know what he could expect from War Machine's role in the MCU, adding: "We don't know any of that, but this is what it is, so you've got an hour."
After a few games of laser tag and some serious thinking, Cheadle accepted the offer from Marvel.
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"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," he said.
Rhodey (AKA War Machine) is set to lead his own movie called Armour Wars in 2024 which Cheadle has teased: "In every successive film, he's coming more and more out of Tony's shadow and becoming his own person.
"But I still think we haven't really figured out who he is and really dug into that. So that's what the movie is for."
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Harley Young