Deadline Hollywood has a great piece up right now about how Marvel Comics' notoriously cheap business practices are running headlong into actors who feel they're worth more than they're getting for starring in Marvel's wildly profitable movies.

The issue going forward is how many of the Avengers stars and starlets are still bound by early agreements and longterm options which Marvel can continue to exploit individually. To counter, I’ve learned the Avengers cast are becoming united behind Robert Downey Jr who is seen as the “leader” – like “a big brother” in the words of one rep - for all the younger actors in the ensemble. “He’s the only guy with real power in this situation. and balls of steel, too. He’s already sent a message that he’s not going to work for a place where they treat his colleagues like shit,” one source explains. Another rep tells me, “I have four words for Marvel – ‘Fuck you, call Robert.’” As Downey himself has said publicly about his $50M-plus payday, ”I’m what’s known as a strategic cost,” adding that Marvel is “so pissed” he earned that much.

It's funny—this almost exactly mirrors the way that Marvel has mistreated comics creators for decades now. (Read Sean Howe's excellent Marvel Comics: The Untold Story for more information about the history of Marvel's shameful history with artists and writers.) But unlike comics, where Marvel successfully bet that fans wouldn't care who was drawing Iron Man as long as Iron Man comics came out every month, I don't think an Iron Man 4 starring, say, Joel Edgerton as Tony Stark will be breaking any box office records, although it might still be a profitable movie. Could you imagine an Avengers 2 with an almost-entirely new cast? This issue, rather than superhero fatigue, might wind up being the thing that upends the Marvel Comics movie universe.