First IRON MAN 2 Poster

At the Licensing International Expo in Las Vegas, several posters for some of the highly-anticipated films are revealed and we have poster for Iron Man 2. “Iron Man 2″ takes place “six months after Stark revealed his identity as Iron Man” at the end of the first movie. According to a scooper at CinemaBlend, Tony Stark will team with Nicky Fury from the Avenger project and Shield to take on the terrorist known as The Mandarin. I did some looking and it appears this rumor might have started with an interview Jon Favreau did with EW where he mentioned mandarin, quote;

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.

Filming of “Iron Man” sequel reaching the halfway point, director Jon Favreau and star Mickey Rourke opened up a bit about the title character, Jim Rhodes/War Machine and villain Whiplash.

“Tony's expected to be a role model and I don't think he's ready to be one,” Favreau told Empire. “He's under a great deal of pressure and when you're under pressure, I think you find outlets for that. That's one of the tensions of the film: it's one thing to say you're Iron Man, and another thing to actually become Iron Man.” Favreau hinted that Rhodes (Don Cheadle), will be tooling up big-time when he dons his own armored suit as War Machine. “Rhodesy is definitely stepping up in this film. Let me put it this way: Tony's not the only person with technology in the film.” “I'm having the time of my life,” said Rourke about portraying the new Iron Man nemesis Whiplash. “It's been really brutal, because my Iron Man suit weighs 23lb. It's sort of a half-suit, with half my skin showing, with lots of Russian tattoos, because [Whiplash is just] out of a Russian-zone prison.”

Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell, Garry Shandling, and John Slattery stars “Iron Man 2” is set to hit U.S. theaters on May 7, 2010.on Man 2″ is scheduled to hit theaters on May 7th, 2010. Update: Jun 07, 2009 Iron Man 2 poster