Posted in: Comics, Current News, Ike Perlmutter, Marvel Studios, Movies | Tagged: John Turitzen, mcu, wall street jounnal

Ike Perlmutter Not Spending Money, Except For Robert Downey Jr.'s Car

Ike Perlmutter was very hard on costs. He was a guy who had made his money by dealing with companies that had slid into bankruptcy.

Ike Perlmutter, former CEO of Marvel Entertainment and the man who turned the comics publisher into a movie maker has a reputation for being very careful with spending money, to what is sometimes seen at a psychopathic level. It is also worth mentioning that as an Israeli billionaire, this description has been seen as anti-Semitic, playing off racist descriptions of Jewish people being money grabbers. However, in Ike Perlmutter's case, his reputation seems to be deserved, though it has exceptions. I would hear stories of his taking paper out of bins, removing staples, ripping pages into four, and reusing them as notepads. I am told this was more of a performance in front of Marvel staff to encourage a lack of waste and care with resources at a time when the publisher was coming out of bankruptcy, but he is also known for providing as few resources for staff and creators as possible.

Back in July, The Wall Street Journal's podcast, The Journal, hosted by Kate Linebaugh and Ryan Knutson, ran a series of episodes by Ben Fritz looking at the rise of Marvel Studios from comic book publisher to film studio to Disney purchase and the executive and creator battles within. It made a few headlines, but there are lots of gems that seemed to be missed, such as Marvel's initial relationship with Sony Pictures, led by our favourite Marvel executives, Avi Arad, and Ike Perlmutter, two toy manufacturers who took over the comic book company and made it profitable again. Catch up on more of our coverage with this tag.

John Turitzin was Marvel's former Chief Administrative Officer, Executive Vice President, and General Counsel, and he recalls the reputation of Ike Perlmutter and money matters. "Ike Perlmutter was very hard on costs. He was a guy that had made his money by dealing with companies that had slid into bankruptcy or into financial distress. So when Ike began focusing on making movies, he brought that mindset over to the movie studio and applied it on the movie studio… The mindset of Hollywood tends to be to spend more money, to make bigger films, to make them more attractive, to spend more money on special effects, to spend more money on talent. That was the approach. Ike was inside every single detail, challenging every detail of making the movie, and it led to a fair amount of friction with the studio, eventually. For example, when we made Iron Man, there was a scene in Iron Man, it's the scene in which Tony Stark gets hijacked, in which his convoy of Humvees was attacked and he was captured. And the original script called for, I think it was ten Humvees, and Ike looked at that and said, "Why do we need 10 Humvees? That's too many. Cut the number of Humvees. It's too expensive." So we cut it back, I think, to three."

Avi Arad has similar observations. "When we made our first movie on our own money, Iron Man, he was freaking out. He was sending the accounting guys to see what's going on. Then I get a call, "How come they have all this candy around the set? We pay them; they can buy their own candy." It was an education."

When Marvel spent money on Robert Dowey Jr. and Jon Favreau's cars

David Maisel, former Vice Chairman, President of Marvel Studios, and CEO of Marvel Entertainment, was the man who pitched the concept of Marvel Studios to Avi Arad and Ike Perlmutter in the first place. He recalls a time when Ike Perlmutter was happy to spend money. "I remember calling Ike and saying I thought we should get Jon Favreau and Robert Downey presents, get them new cars, and he agreed…  I think Favreau wanted a certain Mercedes, or his wife thought he would like it in a certain color, and Robert wanted a Bentley in a certain color. Because I remember when I think it was the night we went to Mr. Chow's. We played a trick on Jon, and the valet brought up the Mercedes, and then he was so happy. And then it was really funny because Robert was happy, too. But then we could tell he's probably wondering like, "Where's my car?" And we made him wait a few days, but we brought it to his house one afternoon, where I think he was taking a nap or something, and we parked it in his driveway so that when he woke up, he saw his new car. And I think that spirit of fun, which I think a lot of people might be surprised that Ike supported that, but he did."

But the spending didn't last long. John Turitzin says, "It was an increasingly tense situation, largely having to do with movie budgets, largely having to do with controlling costs. Starting in 2005, we had built Marvel Studios and were excited by the development and watched it grow. And it was sad watching it fall apart."

Robbie Whelan, who interviewed Perlmutter for the Journal, is known as the Ike Whisperer or the Perlmutter and talked of Ike's mental processes. "He says this comes from the fact that when he was younger in the Middle East, he had days where there would be no food on the table for dinner. He never forgot that, and he always just had a chip on his shoulder about waste and about savings." Ben Fritz adds, "Ike said he regularly goes to Costco for lunch with his wife, a $3 hotdog meal including a diet Pepsi and a yogurt. When it comes to business, Ike says he keeps an equally close eye on costs." Robbie Whelan adds, "Ike Perlmutter was laser-focused on this idea that a movie should be made as cheaply as possible. It should be marketed as cheaply as possible. And only then can you get the return on investment that a movie like that should be making… Disdain would be a gentle word to use to describe Ike's attitude towards Hollywood. He thinks that Hollywood people don't understand business. He thinks all they care about is the box office. And his main problem with Hollywood people is that he says they don't understand the concept of return on investment… He told me a really funny story a couple of days ago about how he said if there was a premiere of a Marvel movie and 1,000 people were invited, and they were serving Pepsi at the premiere, he would only order 800 cups because he would assume that not everybody's going to drink a Pepsi, first of all. But also, look, it's an easy way to save money. It's an easy way. The guy who's the head of the studio is making money hand over fist. He's trying to save money on popcorn and Pepsi, and that's just who Ike is."

John Turitzin also wants to make clear the credit Ike does deserve. "He deserves enormous credit. He deserves enormous credit. There would be no Marvel Studios today if it weren't for Ike Perlmutter's support of David Maisel in raising the huge amount of financing that it took to launch Marvel Studios and to get it off the ground, and this is enormous credit for them. I think he's proud that he was able to take a company that was completely on its back in bankruptcy in the late 1990s and turn it around and make it into a hugely successful company that Walt Disney Company bought for $4 billion. That was a huge accomplishment."

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