It has been more than three weeks since the MCU’s official announcement about Robert Downey Jr.‘s return to the franchise at this year’s SDCC. And now, The Sympathizer actor is speaking about how his casting as Doctor Doom happened.
Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom & MCU return plans began a year ago
Downey Jr. revealed in a recent interview that the plans for his MCU return to depict Doctor Doom started a year ago. Previously, Downey Jr., who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his outing as Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, portrayed Tony Stark / Iron Man in the franchise for over a decade.
During his appearance on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, Downey Jr. explained that the idea of his return to the MCU was conceptualized about a year ago following a meeting between him, his wife Susan Downey, and the MCU boss Kevin Feige about how he “could be of service to what’s going on in the parks and all their location-based energy.”
Downey Jr. recalled, “And Susan and I were sitting down with Feige at one point, and he said, ‘It just keeps occurring to me that, if you were to come back…’ And Susan was like, ‘Wait, wait, come back as what?’ And then we both realized, over time, that it was another thing that just disproves any doubt anyone could ever have about that guy. [He’s] a very sophisticated, creative thinker about, ‘How can we not go backwards? How can we not disappoint expectations? How can we continue to beat expectations?’ And he brought up Victor von Doom, and I looked into [the] character, and I was like, ‘Wow.’ And later on, he goes, ‘Let’s get Victor von Doom right. Let’s get that right.'” (via ComicBook.com)
Downey Jr. subsequently told Feige that he wanted to talk to Bob Iger “about everything.” The meeting supposedly went well, as Downey Jr. revealed that the Disney CEO liked the idea of his return. “We go to Iger’s pad, and we sit down and start saying, ‘I just really want to be…’ He goes, ‘I like it.’ I was like, ‘He likes it,” Downey Jr. said.
Avengers: Doomsday debuts in theaters in May 2026. But before that, we might get a glimpse of Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which comes out on July 25, 2025.
