Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Ike Perlmutter, Marvel Comics, Marvel Studios, Movies | Tagged: iron man, mcu, Wall Street journal

Marvel's First Film Was Iron Man Because Kids Thought He Was A Robot

Marvel's John Turitzin was trying to decide which character to base the first movie upon, and did a focus group with kids. We got Iron Man.

John Turitzin was Marvel's former Chief Administrative Officer, Executive Vice President, and General Counsel, and he remembers just how Marvel Studios decided that Iron Man would be the very first film that they financed and made themselves.

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 tells them, "We were trying to decide which character to base the first movie upon. We did a focus group with kids, and we described the characters to them, we showed them images of the characters, and we asked them what their thoughts were about the characters, and we took their opinions throughout the day."

At the time, after the Marvel bankruptcy, ToyBiz employees and owners such as Arad and Perlmutter had been elevated to the decision-making positions on the board. John Turitzin reflects that in the big decisions being made. "Our focus was on selling toys. We never viewed the movie studio itself as a way that we were realistically going to generate profits. We thought we would use the movies as a vehicle to enhance the attraction and popularity of characters. At the end of the day, after we described Iron Man to the focus group kids and said you could shoot things out of his hand and he could fly, and he had these powers, they loved Iron Man… To the kids in the focus group, they thought Iron Man was great. Iron Man was like a robot. It had all the attributes and attraction of a robot character."

Of course, the film did rather well for Marvel in its own right. "After Iron Man was released, we were stunned. At least we, in New York, were stunned by the success of the movie at the box office, and we said, "Wow, these movies are actually going to be popular; popular are on their own and can make money on their own." And how did toy sales do? Did they get a big bump? "We didn't. It's interesting, we didn't. Because licensees were skeptical about Iron Man as a character, and it ended up after the movie came out and it was popular, those same licensees started chasing Iron Man because they didn't have enough product on the shelves."

Ironically, even though Marvel was making the movies themselves now, they were licensing out the toy rights to other companies…

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