They're fortunate in that their characters are established enough properties that superhero X will always make at least Y amount of dollars... However.

The reason they were able to come out of the gate so strong with these first 2 flicks is the talent. It's weird that they didn't try to hem up Favreau with a 3-picture deal. Maybe they did, and he declined. In any event now his rate has gone up and they probably just need to suck it up and pay the man.

Thing with Marvel Studios is that they're gonna want to keep their product out there, which is understandable, but they might do so at the cost of quality. They're announcing a release date for Iron Man 2 and there's no script yet (which I find even more worrisome than the possibility of no Favreau)... I'd love to see them take their time on projects, choose the right scripts and the right people... You know, make themselves the Pixar of superhero flicks or something. But they might not be in a financial situation where they can take that route even if they wanted to...

We'll see.