The only thing we didn’t have was an official word from Marvel, but now we have it. ‘Iron Man 2′ has been confirmed for April 30, 2010. Jon Favreau and his crew already hinted at how they’d like to do a sequel. They said it in like every other interview last week. If it wasn’t for the possible actors’ strike, they might have already been working on it. But Marvel didn’t want to take any risks by setting the release date for next summer.

Marvel Entertainment stock jumped almost 10% as we expected, but settled to around 7.5% later in the day. This while the market was down overall, mostly caused by the failed Yahoo deal and concerns about mortgage lender Countrywide’s suitor backing out as well.

In 2006, Marvel Entertainment started raising $525 million to produce its own movies. Before that it was only licensing its characters, like ‘Spider-man’ to Sony. Their second film will be ‘The Incredible Hulk’ in June and the third will be the just announced ‘Iron Man’ sequel. Marvel also announced their fourth feature called ‘Thor,’ which is planned for June 4, 2010. They sure like their summer season.

Already getting sick of all the ‘Iron Man’ coverage? Well, wait a couple of days. We will be all over how bad ‘Speed Racer’ is doing. But for now, let’s take a closer look at how ‘Iron Man’ did globally.

As we already know it made $96.8 million overseas at 57 territories and 7,500 screens. But what was the number two territory after the US? That’s right, the ones with the English dialect, the UK with $10.3 million. Followed closely by our Mexican friends with $9.6 million. In third, quite surprising, came South Korea. It was the biggest launch in South Korea for 2008 and even double of what ‘Spider-man’ did at its launch.

Fourth to sixth were France with $7.1, Spain with $6.2 and Brazil with $6 million. All this is even more impressive when you consider ‘Iron Man’ was unknown to most people outside the US. They would have met the iron man the first time seeing the trailer.

‘Iron Man’ is expected to be able to surpass $300 million overseas. Which would make it one of the more successful comic book movies outside the US.

I guess Robert Downey Jr. can start training again this Monday, because ‘Iron Man 2′ is pretty much confirmed by now. (for all the latest numbers see Iron Man box office facts and rumors)

‘Iron Man,’ which opened in about 60 territories this week, is expected to make over $100 million this weekend in the US alone. That’s just a couple of million short of the highest non-sequel opening by ‘Spider-man’ in 2002, which made $115 million. Yes Sony, you can be proud too, everybody is happy this weekend. Not even a little game called GTA IV could stop the iron man from exceeding every expectation.

Holding the world in a tight grip, ‘Iron Man’ is expected to exceed the $200 million bar worldwide, which makes it profitable in its first weekend if you don’t consider marketing costs. Not only a remarkable accomplishment for a relatively unknown comic book character, but also for Marvel. It’s their first independently produced picture and they didn’t shy away from taking some bold steps with this one. No studio in their right mind would have taken Robert Downey Jr. for the leading role. And I’m sure the Marvel Entertainment stock will make a little jump ahead of the official weekend numbers this Monday.

Again, you can go here for the Iron Man box office totals.