'Iron Man 4' not in current plans according to Robert Downey Jr

It's no revelation that Iron Man is without a doubt Marvel's most profitable character, making Robert Downey Jr the best paid actor of the bunch. With Iron Man 3 being as successful as it was taking the 5th spot as top grossing film of all time it would seem like a no-brainer to continue the series and people are wondering when that sequel would come, but Marvel appears to have other plans.

Marvel godfather Kevin Feige has already mentioned the idea of the next two years of movies being to introduce a new title and continue an existing title, but from the continuing titles there has been no mention of Iron Man and Feige has also said that it wouldn't be out of the question that for Tony Stark they could apply the same formula as James Bond and the role could be handed to another actor. In an interview with Variety while promoting his film The Judge in Toronto Robert Downey Jr confirms the speculation that Iron Man 4 is not in any current plans, when asked about a fourth Iron Man movie the actor said that “There isn’t one in the pipe. No, there’s no plan for a fourth Iron Man.”

These comments shouldn't be taken as anything definitive, but taking them as they are and where everything stands they do make sense. Downey Jr is only contracted for two more films at the moment, those being The Avengers : Age of Ultron and presumably Avengers 3  which means Marvel would have to come with the right offer for him to appear again as Iron Man. Downey Jr is also not getting any younger so by the time he is done with Avengers 3 he might be burned out, and this may be in my opinion the reason Marvel is setting up other franchises, to still deliver other great titles while they work out what will happen to Iron Man. I really can't give an educated guess to what will happen to the character but I wouldn't mind it being recast when Downey is ready to call it quits, in any case I trust Marvel enough to find a good solution to this. In the mean time we can still look forward to seeing Robert Downey Jr in Avengers: Age of Ultron that recently finished shooting and comes out May 1st, 2015 and possibly Avengers 3, let me know your thoughts on the subject in the comment section.