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Robert Downey Jr. almost played an iconic ‘Fantastic Four’ character before becoming Iron Man

The MCU could have looked SO different if this panned out!

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Photo via Marvel Studios

One of the most enjoyable pastimes of just about any comic book fan, or just about anyone – is to ponder alternate realities and what could have been if things were slightly different. Heck, as we all know – Marvel released its What If? Series on Disney Plus based entirely on this premise when it comes to all of our fan-favorite MCU characters.

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Well – on the 15th anniversary of Iron Man, a whole new kind of ‘What if?’ which transcends the MCU as we know it came about – What if Robert Downey Jr. never got to play Iron Man? Scratch that, what if he played Doctor Doom instead? It would seem that such a timeline came much closer to being than we may think – as revealed in an Iron Man retrospective video posted earlier today featuring Kevin Feige and Jon Favreau

While reminiscing about how the iconic film that kickstarted the MCU came to be, Favreau shared an anecdote about having heard that Feige had met with the star about appearing in the critically and broadly reviled 2005 adaptation of Fantastic Four, to which Feige nods in agreement, publicly confirming the fact for the first time. 

“…I remember you had all met with him already for like, Dr. Doom or something on another project I think he had come through on, like, Fantastic Four. So everybody sort of knew who he was and I remember sitting down with the guy and I was like geez he just got that spark in him and his eye, and he’s ready. And that’s when we were in [Kevin Feige’s] office and we were pointing to his headshot and saying we got to try to figure this out.”

As we all know by this point, the role of Dr. Doom in 2005’s Fantastic Four ended up going to Julian McMahon. We can safely speak for everyone when we say – thank goodness.

It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that Robert Downey Jr. could have appeared as Doctor Doom in that flop of an adaptation and still ended up being Iron Man (after all, Chris Evans did play the Human Torch in that film), we would rather have not taken our chances. We’re glad things panned out the way they did.

Robert Downey Jr. would go on to reprise his role as Tony Stark on multiple occasions over the next decade, culminating in Avengers: Endgame. All of those works are available to stream on Disney Plus.