Jon Favreau had a very bad time filming Iron Man 2 because of the friction with the Marvel studio executives.
The problem was that with the success of the first Iron Man , Marvel executives realized that it was possible to create what later became the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), an opportunity to produce a whole set of films that would feed off each other and constitute a sort of mega franchise.
In order to make sure that Iron Man 2 would build bridges to other films, they began demanding changes to the script from Jon Favreau.
And the changes continued to come even as filming began.
Marvel executives particularly wanted SHIELD to be very present in the film.
But these changes didn’t fit well with the script, and Favreau found them absurd. He thought they made the plot disjointed and sometimes incoherent.
Things got so bad between Favreau and Marvel that the director later informed the studio that he would not direct the next film…
But several sources on the Marvel side say that the third part of the saga would not have been offered to Favreau anyway because it had become too expensive…
