In an interview with GQ, Cheadle recalls the moment that Marvel offered him the role. The actor revealed that the studio only gave him two hours to decide if he wanted to join the MCU and sign a six-movie contract with Marvel. “I was at my kid’s laser tag birthday party,” Cheadle recalls. “They called me and said, ‘This is what’s happening and we’re giving you the offer. If you don’t say yes then we’re going to the next person. This is going to happen very fast. Why don’t you take an hour and decide if you want to do it.’” The magnitude of the deal must have taken the actor by surprise. “It was a six-movie deal! In an hour I have to decide?” the actor shared. Cheadle inquired about the other five movies before committing to the role. Marvel replied, “It’s going to be these Avengers and this is what it is, so you have to say yes or no.” The actor also asked about Marvel’s plans for his character. The studio responded by saying, “we don’t know any of that but this is what it is so you’ve got an hour.” Cheadle explained to the studio that he was in the middle of his child’s birthday party and Marvel understood and gave him two hours instead. “So we played laser tag for two hours and I was talking to my wife and we thought about it and talked to my agent and tried to get as much information as we could. And we just took a flyer and said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.’” The actor revealed in the interview that he has had prior experience working with CGI before Iron Man 2. While nothing compares to the scale of Marvel’s special effects work, Cheadle explains that working with CGI is fundamentally the same at its core. “You’re trying to do the same thing always, which is to try and create circumstances for your character to step into inside your own head so that you believe what it is you’re doing, and then the audience can believe,” the Marvel star shared. The upcoming Armor Wars will be Cheadle’s first solo outing as War Machine and the actor shared during the interview that this is the culmination of James Rhodes’ gradual stepping out of Tony Stark’s shadow. “In every successive film, he’s coming more and more out of Tony’s shadow and becoming his own person. But we still haven’t explored who he is and really dug into that yet. That’s what the movie is for,” Cheadle said of his upcoming film. Armor Wars was originally conceived as a Disney+ series and later reworked into a full-length feature film. The plot takes inspiration from the Iron Man comic book story arc of the same name. War Machine will be taking the place of Tony Stark’s Iron Man in the movie adaptation. Marvel has not yet announced a release date for Armor Wars. Filming for the movie is expected to begin sometime this year. You can watch Cheadle’s full interview with GQ here.
