Robert Downey Jr. has been sharing some more nuggets of information regarding , and suggests that his co-stars will be unlikely to make an appearance.

“The whole Avengers thing was such a relief and such a confirmation of Kevin Feige’s vision for this all along,” said Downey of The Avengers ’ box-office success. “As Kevin has put it, the next step after that is to bring in someone like Shane Black and - without pretending that the Avengers don’t exist - find a way to go back to a kind of re-investigation of Tony’s world.

“He thought it would be, one, fun for the audience and, two, would rock in a different way than The Avengers . But we can’t help it - everywhere you look now in every Marvel movie there are opportunities where certain new pals of his could be useful. So they’re in the atmosphere, so to speak, but I wouldn’t expect to see them on the ground in this one.”

Sounds as though there will be plenty of refeꦗrences to the Avengers then, if not actual appearances from specific team members. It certainly sou🐷nds as though the film will follow directly on from what has gone before.

POSSIBLE SPOILER UPDATE:

are reporting that Downey Jr.'s choice of words may have been very careful, with reports that Stark will head into space to meet the at the end of the movie. There's an Iron Man toy that seems to confirm that Downey Jr. will don a deep space suit too (although, we all know that toys can't always be trusted).

Directed by Shane Black and co-starring Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley, Iron Man 3 opens in the UK on 3 May 2013.