As of today, Robert Downey, Jr. has two more "Avengers" films under contract, and "Iron Man 4" is still just a concept.

A prelude to the concept: "You can take away my suits, you can take away my home, but there's one thing you can never take away from me: I am Iron Man." - Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) in Marvel's "Iron Man 3." 

A concept that Marvel could not resist. While "Iron Man 3" was supposed to be a resolution to the trilogy, fans are creative that there is always a way to bring him back.

In an appearance on The Daily Show, Downey was candid enough, even winking when he stated: "I don't know. I had a long contract with them, and now we're gonna renegotiate."

In a subsequent interview with GQ, Downey talked about an injury he sustained: "It got me thinking about how big the message from your cosmic sponsor needs to be before you pick it up. How many genre movies can I do? How many follow-ups to a successful follow-up are actually fun?"

His extensive GQ interview spoke more about his vision for making movies, and for some observers, it was Downey's way of playing 'hardball.'

From GQ: "Here's the thing. At whatever point I'm done with this, I'm going to have a bit of a crisis, because I probably haven't even fully ingested how much I've enjoyed it, how much it's meant. It so came out of kind of relative obscurity as this second-tier character from the Marvel universe, and I feel I was part of making it something more. But it also to me was just good filmmaking. It's funny, people will come up to me and go, 'Dude, how do you do it? How do you dress up and play these...?' While whatsisname is shooting the next David O. Russell or whatever, I'm, 'Here's the thing, you're either having a good time or a bad time, and you're either doing a good movie or a bad movie.' And I know one thing, which is that there is no guarantee that doing a movie you think is 'important' "-"isn't going to be the worst piece of tripe I've ever had to sit through. Or that this kind of two-dimensional genre movie I'm doing isn't actually going to be thoroughly entertaining. Isn't that why you went to the movies to begin with? Whatever."

Downey's comments can be read as a reluctance to return, and the statement that he 'was part of making it something more' was his way of taking the credit for Iron Man becoming a big hit. Marvel has often taken a hardball stance that the characters are bigger than the actors that portray them-justifying the idea that Stark can be recast. But analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen and Co. has warned, through The Hollywood Reporter:

"It would be a definite negative for that particular franchise. "He is Tony Stark. The other individual franchises -- Thor, Captain America, Hulk -- etc., don't have near the level of box-office potential that Iron Man does. The other way to look at it is that Iron Man would probably look more like those other franchises in terms of box-office performance without Downey."

Despite all of the posturing, Downey will return if his demands, both creative and financial, are met. The ball lies in Marvel's court. The studio has two more films with Downey in "The Avengers" and they can experiment with the extent of Downey's role in the film. Would Avengers still be a hit if Tony Stark just has a secondary role?

That is the billion dollar question.