Don Cheadle had hour to decide if he wanted Terrence Howard’s Marvel role

Don Cheadle was given an hour to decide if he wanted to replace Terrence Howard in the Marvel franchise.
Empire star Terrence was the original actor to play Lt. Col. James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes / War Machine, taking on the role opposite Robert Downey Jr. in 2008’s Iron Man.
By the time Iron Man 2 came out two years later, Don had been cast as the superhero – a role he’s helmed right up until the latest movie, Avengers: Endgame.
Revealing Robert and producer Kevin Feige called him up to offer him the part during his daughter’s birthday party, saying he had an hour to decide, he told Variety and iHeart’s new film podcast The Big Ticket: “(They said) ‘You just gotta take a leap of faith’. But that’s, like, 10 years. That could be 12 years that we’re talking about. I said, ‘Well, I’m at my daughter’s birthday party.’ They said, ‘Oh, take two hours.'”
Coincidentally, the Oscar nominee bumped into Terrence the very next day.
“We never had any beef,” Don said of his Crash co-star.
Terrence left the Marvel Cinematic Universe on bad terms, and has subsequently blamed Robert for pushing him out of the lucrative franchise.
During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live in 2013, he told host Andy Cohen that his exit was all down to a money dispute.
“It turns out that the person I helped become Iron Man… when it was time to re-up for the second one, (he) took the money that was supposed to go to me and pushed me out,” he stated.
“We did a three-picture deal, so that means that you did the deal ahead of time. It was going to be a certain amount for the first one, a certain amount for the second one, a certain amount for the third. They came to me with the second and said, ‘Look, we will pay you one-eighth of what we contractually had for you, because we think the second one will be successful with or without you.’ And I called my friend – that I helped get the first job – and he didn’t call me back for three months.”
Later in 2015, Terrence reiterated the story, pointing out how much money he’s lost out on as a consequence of being axed from the Iron Man movies.