Director Jon Favreau has been leaving more hints that the Iron Man sequel will not follow the highly acclaimed Demon in a Bottle storyline, which involves Tony Stark battling alcoholism.

“The comic book fans might see ‘Demon in a Bottle’ as a fresh story line but I haven’t seen ‘Hancock’ yet. From what I’ve seen it seems there is a lot of imagery that seems to be shared. Him flying through billboards and things,” Favreau told Collider on the set of his new movie I Love You Man. “The idea of the hero whose biggest enemy is himself, and him fighting through his demons, you want to come at the audience with something fresh. You don’t want to feel like you are echoing something that somebody else is doing.”

I can understand the Hancock criticism, but I was pretty sure from the very beginning that Marvel would probably never allow the Demon in a Bottle storyline in a sequel to their hugely successful comic book film. It doesn’t make good business sense, even though it’s clearly the best story in the many years of Iron Man’s comic book history. But Favreau insists that “There are plenty of story lines to explore from the 40 years of history from that character.” And sure, there is Mandarin, who was set-up with the Ten Rings in the first film, but I’m not sure that villain is big enough to carry a sequel. Jon insists that “There is a lot that is very relevant about that character, in the pool of the landscape that we find ourselves in,” and I wouldn’t disagree.

Also, Favreau has said from the beginning that he would like to direct an Avengers movie. But now that Marvel has made the big announcement, he’s not sure its possible.

“I would love to. Clearly I have stated that ‘The Avengers’ would be fun. But I look at their release schedule and they have announced ‘Iron Man 2′ for 2010 and then ‘Avengers’ for 2011. I know from experience there is no way I could. I don’t know what they have in mind, but there is no way that ‘The Avengers’ could be done in a year. Either they are thinking about somebody else doing it or they have something up their sleeve that I don’t know,” said Favreau, later adding: “Hopefully we end up going for a sequel that is going to be bigger and better than the first one. That’s not always the case with sequels. Sometimes you end up trying to do just rush, and hit a release date. Hopefully this sequel will be driven by the material and driven by good ideas.”

We can only hope. But when you start making business decisions over creative decisions (No alcoholism in our highly profitable superhero film), it usually leads to second rate results. You can read the full interview with Favreau over on Collider.