Entertainment Weekly caught up with both Robert Downey Jr. and director Jon Favreau this week after the mega-success of "Iron Man" at the box-office and dis

cussed the upcoming sequel.

Most interesting is that Favreau wasn't aware of the announcement until it happened - "We've been speaking informally about it. In concept we would all love to work together again. But I found out about the announcement last night, so it's not something that -- we would definitely love to collaborate more with the sequel. There's no formal arrangement yet, but in theory we would all love to see it happen."

So he's keen to return? "There's definitely a lot of ideas that we all have now. This type of movie is based on serialized materials, so it lends itself very easily to [many different sequel possibilities]. There's definitely a level of enthusiasm from myself and the cast to tell more stories."

If he does return, talk of incorporating Stark's battle with alcohol sounds like it will be included into the script - "'Demon in a Bottle' is one of the very strongest story lines of the of the series, and Iron Man is not a comic book character who is known for having wonderful storylines. He's known for having great suits, great characters, but the villains kind of get thin at times, and it's so very dated when you look at Communism and the metaphor. Politically, much of it doesn't hold up well. And the Mandarin is incredibly challenging in that respect. So we have challenges ahead of us. Demon in a Bottle tends to be one that, from a storytelling perspective, is compelling to all of us."

Favreau is also happy with the "Avengers" movie - "I think it would be a very smart third film in the Iron Man series. It's very difficult to keep these franchises from running out of gas after two [movies]. The high point seems to be the second one, judging by history: If you just look at the consensus in the reviews, you see that X-Men 2 and Spider-Man 2 are sort of seen by the fans as the sort of high point of both franchises, though I don't necessarily agree with that. But to be able to fold it into an Avengers is something you just couldn't do in another studio, and I think what Marvel is about is stuff you can't do at a bigger studio."