It's been less than a decade since IRON MAN was released and it's amazing how far the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come since that first installment; taking a character who wasn't exactly a top-tier Marvel hero and casting him with an actor who had been experiencing personal and career problems for some time didn't exactly sound like a recipe for success, but IRON MAN pulled it off and served as a successful launch for everything that followed. Jon Favreau, who directed the first two IRON MAN flicks as well as appearing as Happy Hogan, will be making a return to the MCU for SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING and he recently spoke with Yahoo Movies about his relationship with Marvel and how he feels reprising the role of Happy.
I had done two back-to-back, and that required a tremendous amount of concentration on one subject. Fortunately, I didn’t lose connection with it; I just wasn’t directing there. I still was executive-producing Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron and Iron Man 3, and I appeared in Iron Man 3. So I maintained the relationship as part of the family. And now, in Spider-Man: Homecoming, coming back and reuniting with the characters as an actor — it’s a lot of fun. It allows me to maintain the relationship with the MCU, but also to do other things that are interesting that are outside of that genre and that set of characters.
Yeah. It’s fun to come back as an actor. Especially when the filmmakers are taking care of you, and taking care of the characters and the story. If you’re in good hands, it’s great to come in and play in somebody else’s world. That’s how I started, as an actor. I really enjoy being on other people’s sets, especially if I have cool things to do. It’s all the fun and much less of the responsibility.
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING will hit theaters on July 7, 2017.