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You may have thought that the second Jumanji film was 2017's Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, but you'd be wrong. The honor goes to a movie that also serves as a time capsule of the year 2005 called Zathura, which was directed by Jon Favreau. Yes, Zathura, a movie starring both Josh Hutcherson and Kristen Stewart, is the second film in the Jumanji film series, having also been adapted from the picture book by Chris Van Allsburg, the same creator behind the 1981 Jumanji book. We're learning all kinds of things today!

Recently, Iron Man director Jon Favreau took a look back on his career in an interview with Vanity Fair, and he recalled how Zathura gave him the opportunity to work with serious studio money as well as with CGI for the first time. While Zathura was a box office failure, it still opened doors for him with Marvel Studios. 

"So, Zathura did not do very well. And even though it was a priority for the studio, I think it got fairly good notices, okay notices, but at the box office it was just [shakes head 'no']. And then I learned what that does, it sort of really stalls your career," Favreau began. 

"But I later learned from Kevin Feige that it made me a perfect candidate for Iron Man because Iron Man was the first MCU film," he continued. "They were looking to make this film on a budget. [Marvel Studios was] used to working with Fox or other partners, they were going to do it alone, but they weren't going to spend a lot of money. And so I was a bit of an undervalued element to the thing. You definitely get affected by the failure, commercially, of your last project. But they saw the technical work I had done on it, and they said, 'Oh, he actually understands this stuff.'"

Let's remember that the first Iron Man was an indie movie that was financed entirely by Marvel Studios. At that point in time, Marvel Entertainment (both Comics and Studios) was an independent company that had not yet been bought by Walt Disney Studios. It wasn't even distributed by Disney either - Paramount had the honors there. Oh how the media landscape has changed since 2008. 

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters