One thing I’ve always liked about Samuel L. Jackson, and this might be part of the reason he’s such a cult fave, is that he’s always been less concerned with taking the “good roles” and more about getting a paycheck. Thus, Sam has been in a gazillion movies and in many of them, he is only in very briefly. How can we forget his part as the dude robbing the fast food place in Coming To America, as the piano player in Kill Bill where he didn’t even get his face on screen or the best of all the Oscar worthy performance as fish food in Deep Blue Sea?

With all that said, there is one very small part Sam had that was far from insignificant and that was his role as Nick Fury in Iron Man (in a scene that roles after the end credits). As Marvel plans for all of their movies to exist in the same “universe” Nick Fury was going to be the glue that holds everything together as his character will likely assemble Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor (film coming in 2010) and Captain America (film coming 2010) into the Avengers (film coming 2011).

That all seemed to be on the verge of falling apart when Sam said in a recent interview that even though he wanted to continue to be Nick Fury, he wasn’t sure if he’d be returning because Marvel wasn’t trying to come up off that money. Now fanboys can breathe a sigh of relief as it was announced yesterday that Samuel L. Jackson has signed on with Marvel to play Nick Fury in nine films! Yes, I said nine. That would have Sam as Nick Fury in Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, The Avengers, and any sequel that may follow. A Nick Fury movie may also be an option. Basically he’ll be playing Nick Fury until he dies.

The irony of Jackson playing Nick Fury in these movies, as you can see in the picture above, is that the look of the character in comics was actually based on Jackson himself. Who better to play the character than the person the character was modeled after?