IRON MAN 3 (BIG UPDATE)

• IRON MAN 3

The Iron Patriot to debut in Iron Man 3

Shane Black's Iron Man 3 will feature the red, white and blue Iron Patriot armor.

Iron Patriot on Set

The armor made its first appearance in 2009's "Dark Avengers" #1. Following the events of the "Secret Invasion" crossover, Norman Osborn was mistakenly heralded as an American hero and tasked with leading a group of government sanctioned-Avengers. Taking the technology from Stark Industries, Osborn designed his suit to represent the then-recently-deceased Captain America.

Because the character of Osborn is a Spider-Man villain and the rights rest at Sony Pictures, it's pretty much a certainty that a different character will be donning the suit in the upcoming film.

The armor is being worn by James Badge Dale, who plays Eric Savin in the feature film. First announced earlier this month, Savin becomes, in the comic books, the cyborg villain Coldbood. At this point it is unknown whether or not we'll see the actor in multiple costumes or if Coldblood and Iron Patriot are being merged into one character.

Now we normally do our speculation of such things on FILMRAP, but since this is quite a big story we decided that we will do our speculation here!

We think that the Iron Patriot suit will be manufactured by the military, seeing that the War Machine armor is available to them thanks to Rhodey. This obviously allows them easy access to the suit, and they study it and start developing their own.

We do think that something will go wrong with the suit, and almost leave Savin for dead. Using nano-tech they will keep him alive, somewhat as the cyborg villain.

In Iron Man 2 Tony states that the world is atleast 10 years away from developing a Iron Man suit, and now with the use of Nano Tech, we can see that there are people that can make it.

So just like Iron Man 1 where Tony found out that his weapons were being sold to the enemy, this time around he finds that the world can manufacture the Iron Man suit with the use of Nano tech, making this story much more personal for our hero, leaving out the Avengers.

Well that’s what we think will happen atleast.

Ben Kingsley is the Mandarin

In other Iron Man 3 news, the folks at Latino Review have got an interesting lead on what is happening on the Iron Man 3 set and apparently not everyone is as tight lipped as the heads of Marvel Studios.

A crew member let it slip that, as predicted, Sir Ben Kingsley is indeed playing The Mandarin in the film but he will NOT be the primary antagonist. Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian will be the main focus of evil in the film with The Mandarin being more to the side of it all. Perhaps waiting for his time to take the spotlight in Iron Man 4?

Now in production in North Carolina, Iron Man 3 stars Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, James Badge Dale, Ashley Hamilton and Jon Favreau. The film is scheduled to hit theaters on May 3, 2013.