A little while back, we had a post titled “Why Howard Was Replaced In Iron Man 2” that pulled heavily from an Entertainment Weekly article that speculated many a reason for Terrance Howard (of Iron Man) being replaced by Don Cheadle (of Crash)in the role of Jimmy Rhodes, who many believe will debut in the sequel as War Machine, another armor-suited crime fighter and friend of Iron Man.

We previously summarized: by the time Justin Theroux started working on the story for Iron Man 2, Favreau was ready to cut a lot of Howard’s part. This resulted in a drastically reduced offer (sources say between a 50% and 80% reduction) that shocked Howard’s reps, who were expecting as much money the second time around. What they got was an offer similar to the other supporting Iron Man characters.

Thing is, that might not have been entirely accurate, according to screenwriter Justin Theroux…

From MTV:

“All that stuff that was in the ‘EW’ article,” Theroux started before a brief pause. “I don’t know. I can only tell you what I know which is that from a writing standpoint we didn’t do anything differently [with the character]. It’s not like we were sitting there going, we need less of this or that. We just approached the characters and the story on their own terms.”

“I can’t really speak to the plot stuff and all the rest of it but Rhodes is completely present in a very strong and big way,” Theroux said of the man who would be War Machine. “He’s COMPLETELY present.”

Sweet! So, we get a movie full of Cheadle.

That makes us care less why Terrance Howard was kicked off in the first place. Good riddance to his wooden Rhodes.