IRON MAN 1 BUDGET MOVIE
‘That’s what brought Iron Man to the front of the line,” said a person who helped to decide which movie Marvel would self-produce first. The overwhelming answer, to the surprise of many at Marvel, was Iron Man. Then they asked kids which ones they would most like to play with as a toy. Marvel brought together groups of children, showed them pictures of its superheroes, and described their abilities and weapons. Licensing was the bulk of Marvel’s business then and revenues increased with each movie featuring its characters. The hope of chief executive Ike Perlmutter and the other Marvel executives at the time was to break even on productions and make money selling toys and other products tied to the films. And, in the mid-2000s, Marvel decided to get into the movie business for itself.
The comic-book publisher, which emerged from bankruptcy when it merged with Toy Biz in the 1990s, sold off the film rights to many of its top characters, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men, years before it began making its own movies. It saw how those studio partners, including Sony and Twentieth Century Fox, were profiting from its characters ( Spider-Man set records when it was released in 2002). There was a time when Marvel thought those movies wouldn’t make money. Theatergoers have collectively spent more than $15 billion at the box office on Marvel movies since the comic-book-company-turned-film-studio launched its superhero movie-verse with Iron Man 10 years ago today (May 2).