Mickey Rourke isn't waiting until Oscar night—and the promise of shiny gold hardware he can drunkenly threaten to sodomize Sean Penn with at the Governor's Ball—to start capitalizing on his newfound Hollywood clout.

In addition to playing a sadistic game of peekaboo with Sin City fans desperate to see him reprise his role in the sequel, he's officially joined the dick-swinging dream cast of Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables.

But were that all! The trades are now reporting that Rourke is close to playing a villain (alongside Sam Rockwell) in the Iron Man sequel—THR says it's Whiplash, Variety, the Crimson Dynamo.

Rourke is in discussions to play a villain described as Tony Stark's Russian alter ego, a heavily tattooed bruiser who is in the arms trade and battles Iron Man in his own nuclear-powered armored suit. [...]

The script — which is still being written — is a guarded secret, but speculation is that villain is likely comicbook nemesis Crimson Dynamo.

What a difference one astonishing performance in a brilliant comeback vehicle makes. Not since Tina Turner escaped Ike's clutches have we seen a career revival of this magnitude, with Rourke too shaking off decades of skull-pounding uppercuts and right hooks to once again become the lumpy toast of Hollywood.