These days Marvel are a license to print huge stacks of money, but had the risk of an Iron Man film not paid off the company would now be like Atari: an empty brand name beloved by nerds existing only on ironic t-shirts.
In fact, if Robert Downey Jr hadn’t become the world’s most charming hero then he and his Avenging pals would very probably be owned by a bank.
Now that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are the most popular things in pop culture it’s hard to remember that the idea of an Avengers was incredibly dumb sounding in 2004.
Thor and Captain America were cheesy jokes. Black Widow, Hawkeye and Nick Fury weren’t even that. And Guardians? Pfft. Indeed, the LA Times asked “If you needed to launch a Hollywood franchise-are those the superheroes you would really turn to?” – a claim which is now up with that record exec who rejected the Beatles because guitar bands were on the way out.
But back then all of the marquee names – Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Blade – had been sold off ages ago. Even The Hulk, who Marvel still mostly owned, wasn’t an option for Marvel’s first film since the movie distribution rights had been hocked to Universal ages before.
So the relatively inexperienced producer Kevin Fiege used what he had, which was a bunch of C-and-below list names. And the eventual first cab off the rank was chosen by showing a bunch of kids pictures of the Marvel characters which Marvel still owned and asking which they’d most like to play with.
And they went with the one they thought was a robot, which immediately suggested a branding issue. And this gamble was enormous, because Marvel was going to fund this film themselves.
And Marvel, to be blunt, had no money with which to build a studio.
Thanks to COO David Maisel a deal was hashed out in 2004 with investment bank Merrill Lynch: $525 million over eight years to make movies based on ten characters which Marvel owned – specifically, Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Avengers, Black Panther, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Hawkeye, Nick Fury, Power Pack, and Shang-Chi.
If the first four films were successful, everyone was happy. If the first four were not, then the rights to the remaining characters went to Merrill Lynch.
Just think about that for a second: had Iron Man not slapped, there was every chance that Ant-Man would end up being owned by a bank. Which would be a very different film.
Of course, then this year Marvel have had Iron Man front the most successful film of all time, and now also own everything in the world (and are themselves owned largely by Disney).
But remember, it only happened because a floundering comics company looked at Iron Man and went “eh, let’s take a risk.”