Considering that Iron Man was the second highest grossing movie of 2008, there’s little question that Iron Man 2 is going to be one of the most heavily-anticipated movies to be released within the next couple of years. I can’t say I’m all that excited for it as of yet, but if you’re dying to hear more details, you’ll definitely want to soak up the massive interview with Jon Favreau over on Ain’t It Cool News this week.

One of the many things discussed is an interesting collaboration that Favreau has set up in order to help plan and storyboard the action sequences for the next film. Apparently he has recruited brilliant animator Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) to help him bridge the gap between CGI and live action. Here’s some of what he had to say about it:

“I really dig his sense of humor and his sense of rhythm, and the way that he acknowledges the same cinematic masters that I really love the work of, like (Akira) Kurosawa and (Sergio) Leone. And he finds a way to pastiche it without ever undermining the stakes or the reality of the tension that’s created in his action sequences… So in this process as we’re storyboarding and designing sequences he and his team have come in and I’m working with them and they’re working on collaborating with us on the project and that’s a new wrinkle and it allows me… I feel like I’m really learning a lot from collaborating with this guy.”

Favreau mentions that the scene in Iron Man where Tony Stark takes out the terrorists using the shoulder rockets was kind of meant to borrow from Kurosawa and Leone, so I guess we can probably expect more of those kinds of stand-offs in the next film. It’s definitely reassuring to hear that Favreau is thinking about all kinds of ways to take superhero flicks in a different direction… how many other comic book movie directors do you hear referencing Sergio Leone? Check out the full interview to learn more about his vision for the film.