The cancelled 2006 movie that was almost Robert Downey Jr’s Marvel debut: “The script was really good”
If you had told somebody in 1999 that Robert Downey Jr would be one of the biggest and most important movie stars of the early 21st century, they would have laughed in your face, as back then, he was a one-time prospect who had seemingly thrown his career away to substance abuse issues.
However, now, in 2026, he’s one of the highest-grossing actors of all time, an Oscar winner, and one of the most instantly recognisable faces on the planet, so while it’s been a long road to recovery, it, of course, all started with Downey starring as the titular superhero in 2008’s Iron Man, the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Despite nobody thinking he was up to the job, his good looks and quick wit elevated a fairly standard superhero flick into a cultural phenomenon that enabled Marvel to launch their entire multi-billion dollar franchise off the back of his work. Downey played Tony Stark for over a decade before bowing out gracefully in Avengers: Endgame, and then returning to Marvel as a different character when they ran out of ideas.
Speaking of Downey playing a different Marvel character, that’s exactly what would have happened had things gone slightly differently. Speaking to Gizmondo, director Paul McGuigan of Lucky Number Slevin and Gangster No 1, discussed an idea he had to make a movie featuring the comic book character Deathlok, whose script would have been provided by David Self, best known for writing Road to Perdition.
Unfortunately, those at the top wanted nothing to do with it.
“I was really into it, but Marvel changed their mind,” he explained, “The script was really good. David Self is no slouch, he’s a great screenwriter. And the whole idea of nanotechnology was fascinating. It would have been a good movie. Maybe they’ll still make it with somebody else.”
Introduced in 1974, Deathlok isn’t one specific Marvel character, but rather a name given to multiple incarnations over the years, wherein the unifying factor is that they are a human being who has died, only to be resurrected by nanotechnology as an undead cyborg. Deathlok hasn’t been in an MCU film, but the Mike Peterson version did appear in the TV show, Agents of Shield, played by J August Richards.
The movie that McGuigan was talking about had been in development since the 1990s, with the late Lee Tamahori originally slated to direct, but he ultimately pulled out, possibly to make Die Another Day instead. Downey wasn’t scheduled to play the title character, but rather the villain of the movie, who McGuigan described as a “weird scientist” type who creates Deathlok in an attempt to become “another Da Vinci”.
It’s hard to see how a film about a minor Marvel character in a pre-MCU world would have been a success. In the years since McGuigan gave that interview, pretty much every other comic book character has been mined for content, so if it hasn’t already happened, chances are we might never see Deathlok on the big screen.
