Tom Cruise is notorious for being hands-on with his projects, something that has apparently been true for decades. And when he was approached for the role of Tony Stark, the film he was presented with didn’t align with his vision. “If I commit to something, it has to be done in a way that I know it’s gonna be something special,” he told IGN in 2005. “And as it was lining up, it just didn’t feel to me like it was gonna work. I need to be able to make decisions and make the film as great as it can be, and it just didn’t go down that road that way.”
Many fans were hopeful we would see Cruise’s Iron Man in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” but screenwriter Michael Waldron has since confirmed that the idea was never even on the table — despite all the fan art online imagining what could have been. At the same time, it’s hard to picture anyone other than Robert Downey Jr. as the genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. But the Marvel Cinematic Universe sure could have turned out a lot differently had Cruise had a lower asking price.
