Receiving a £32 million payday due to his profit-sharing deal with Marvel, Robery Downey Jr is quickly mimicking the playboy multi-millionaire life of the character he plays on screen Tony Stark, with this recent windfall meaning his salary for the Marvel movies towers above that of his co-stars.
Avengers Assemble, as it was known in the UK, has already passed the $1 billion after being on release for only 19 days and is set to smash into the top five highest grossing films of all time.
Ths is in itself no mean feat seeing that the film was an audacious gamble for the studio, bringing together a collection of Marvel characters who had had their own introductory movies into one ensemble superhero whole, with a relatively untested feature film writer-director at the helm in the shape of comic book and geek hero Joss Whedon.
Experts have even predicted that it could become the third highest grossing film of all time, behind James Cameron’s Avatar and Titanic.
