Iron Man is a 2008 American superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character of the same name, produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film was directed by Jon Favreau, with a screenplay by Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway. It stars Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Shaun Toub and Gwyneth Paltrow. In Iron Man, Tony Stark, an industrialist and master engineer, builds a powered exoskeleton and becomes the technologically advanced superhero Iron Man.