Iron Man 3 is currently shooting in Wilmington, North Carolina under the direction of Shane Black, and it's got the biggest film budget of any of the Marvel films thanks to the ultimate success of The Avengers. It's sounding like they're going to go all out on this one.

As we impatiently wait to start seeing stuff from the movie, there's some details about the villains of the film that have been leaking out, the biggest one is confirmation that Ben Kingsly is playing Mandarin. We've assumed this all along, but now people from the set of the film are starting to talk.

Here's what one source described at ComicBook.com:

While talking to some Wilmington locals, we had one source involved with the production tell us that Mandarin was definitely the villain. He said Mandarin had a set of twins that did most of his dirty work for him. Another source who had visited EUE/Screen Gems Studios told us that the sets they were building included Chinese storefronts.

Thanks to our friends at Latino Review we have a little more information on Mandarin's role in the film, and a little clarification of the set of "twins" mentioned above. Here's what they can confirm,

Here’s what we can CONFIRM as true (and not from some guy working security on an off-lot shoot): The Mandarin (as played by Ben Kingsley) is a villain in the ‘Iron Man 3,’ but he’s more a veiled threat as a silent partner to Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian. Killian is the man inventing Extremis and putting it into his “Extremis army” of multiple super-powered individuals. Still no word on exactly how many Extremis soldiers we’ll see, but I’m sticking to my theory that the Coldblood-7 and Firepower casting will not be traditional comics versions of those characters, but instead names they’ve given to Extremis soldiers.

This makes a lot more sense as Mandarin has always been a silent partner in the films, but this time it looks like we'll actually get to see him. I'm very excited about seeing how Iron Man 3 turns out, and according to Feige it's going to be the best of the trilogy, which I believe will be true. What do you think about all this?