Entertainment Weekly seems to have discovered the reasons as to why Terrence Howard‘s role of James Rhodes was re-cast for Iron Man 2.

While everyone automatically assumed that it was a monetary issue, it turned out to be a lot more than that. It’s said that because they cast Howard first, he was actually paid more than everyone else INCLUDING Robert Downey Jr., which is kind of unfathomable. If true, this is obviously not the fault of Terrence Howard, but when they tried to retract and pay him a lot less (like 50% to 80% less, they say) for the sequel, it wasn’t too appreciated, as you might expect.

Sources also seem to think that Howard was really tough to work with, required a lot of takes and, well… wasn’t the best choice, which had them minimizing his role for the sequel. Because of all of this, they cut their losses and moved on to cast Don Cheadle instead.

I guess that would make a little sense now, as the character wasn’t massive in Iron Man and we haven’t seen War Machine yet, so if all these problems are valid, you re-organize and move on. Cheadle is a very talented dude, so the only real issue becomes getting Howard out of your mind and trying to warm up to Don Cheadle as James Rhodes as quickly as possible. Considering most people seem to like him overall, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

One big chunk of the bridge is still missing here though. This is all being spoken of, but nothing seems to have a confirmation to it, just a lot of beliefs and assumptions, which I never take with cement. It could all very likely be true, but Howard’s reps say that he had a great time working on Iron Man and I find it really difficult to believe that he was paid more for that role than Downey Jr. got. Not only was he not in the movie anywhere near as long as Downey’s 97% screen time, but the character wasn’t even really as important as say Gwyneth Paltrow or Jeff Bridges.

It’s still all so very, very strange.

I’ve always really liked Terrence Howard and this is all unfortunate, but it’s about time this all just moves forward. They really need to make a new big casting announcement to get people to forget about all of this!