Don Cheadle has been a lynchpin in the MCU for more than a decade and counting. Cheadle took over for Terrence Howard in 2010 and debuted as War Machine aka “Rhodey” Rhodes in “Iron Man 2” . Cheadle confessed recently that Marvel gave him only 120 minutes (2 hours) to decide if he was going to ink a 6-movie contract with them and join the cast of “Iron Man 2.” Cheadle recollected: “I was at my kid’s laser tag birthday party. They called me and said, ‘This is what’s happening and we’re giving you the offer. If you don’t say yes then we’re going to the next person. This is going to happen very fast. Why don’t you take an hour and decide if you want to do it.’ It was a six-movie deal! In an hour I have to decide?”

The “Brooklyn’s Finest” star asked Marvel what the add-on 5 films would be, to which the film studio replied, “It’s going to be these Avengers and this is what it is, so you have to say yes or no.” The celebrated actor then asked what the pathway of his role would be, to which Marvel said, “We don’t know any of that but this is what it is so you’ve got an hour.” Once the Kansas City native enlightened them that he was at his kid’s birthday party did Marvel widen the timeline an additional hour. Cheadle furthered, “So we played laser tag for 2 hours and I was talking to my wife and we thought about it and talked to my agent and tried to get as much information as we could.”

Ultimately, Don Cheadle accepted Marvel‘s offer, which propelled him into the realm of green-screen movie fabrication and CGI. The “Hotel Rwanda” actor stated that Marvel Studios isn’t so far-flung from more melodramatic fare at its pith, expressing, “You’re trying to do the same thing always, which is to try and create circumstances for your character to step into inside your own head so that you believe what it is you’re doing, and then the audience can believe.” Cheadle is preparing himself after 12 years as a supporting actor in the MCU to lead the forthcoming “Armor Wars” feature picture.

“In every successive film, he’s coming more and more out of Tony’s shadow and becoming his own person. But we still haven’t explored who he is and really dug into that yet. That’s what the movie is for,” the “Colors” actor said of the project. Don Cheadle’s multi-movie contract with Marvel ended in 2022, however, he is set to repeat the War Machine character in the upcoming mini series Secret Invasion on Disney+, with Samuel L Jackson alongside him playing Nick Fury.