Shane Black won't be writing Iron Man 3 after all

Though the hiring of Shane Black to take over Iron Man 3 suggested that Marvel was bringing on the onetime action film king for his smart-ass quip/big-ass explosion yin-and-yang, Black will apparently just be providing that stuff from the director's chair—not all that surprising, considering the suddenly reenergized writer has tons of scripts to work on, like adaptations of Death Note and Doc Savage. The upshot to that slight disappointment is that scripting duties have fallen to Drew Pearce, best known overseas for creating the UK superhero comedy No Heroics, and who recently completed that adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s Runaways that Marvel is still planning on making into a movie someday, maybe. And of course, Black will still be working closely with Pearce, settling any disagreements over character or tone by kicking back under a giant Lethal Weapon poster and saying, “I guess that’s one approach—by the way, did I ever tell you about the time I got $4 million for a single screenplay?”