Marvel announces Iron Man sequel on heels of 1st release

Fresh off a successful opening weekend, a new instalment of Iron Man is on the way, fledgling movie studio Marvel said Monday.

Iron Man 2 is slated for release April 30, 2010, Marvel Studios announced Monday during a conference call discussing the company's earnings.

The metal-clad superhero was already set to see one of his colleagues from the Avengers superhero team join him at the box office: The Incredible Hulk will hit theatres June 13. Marvel Studios chair David Maisel added even more members to the company's upcoming film schedule on Monday, including:

• Thor, slated to hit theatres June 4, 2010.
• The First Avenger: Captain America, due out May 6, 2011.
• The Avengers, expected in July 2011.
• Ant-Man, still in development.

This past weekend's release, which stars Robert Downey Jr. as the genius weapons developer and playboy Tony Stark, who dons the Iron Man suit, marks Marvel's first foray into moviemaking on its own.

Previously, it had licensed some of its top characters to Hollywood studios and saw them score massive hits with the Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four film franchises.

However, because different studios were behind the various franchises, character crossovers were typically not feasible, and Marvel did not retain absolute creative control over the films' storylines.

The new system has Marvel itself financing and producing films based on its vast comic book canon and enlisting the help of studios for distribution.

"In controlling our destiny, we can control where the characters are and we can have our movies connect and be in the same universe," Marvel Studios chair David Maisel said during Monday's call.

For instance, he pointed to the fact that Tony Stark makes an appearance in next month's The Incredible Hulk, while the angry green giant could in return show up in the next Iron Man movie, which will see Downey Jr. reprise the title role.

Opening in limited release Thursday and widely on Friday, Iron Man pulled in nearly $99 million US at the North American box office this past weekend. It made about $200 million US in total worldwide.