How A Group Of Children Determined The First Movies In The MCU
Well, “The Marvels” might have been a box office dud, signaling a historic low point for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the franchise will always remain one of the biggest Hollywood success stories of all time. By now, we all know how Kevin Feige and his cohorts took under-appreciated Marvel characters and created a run of obscenely popular blockbusters that dominated the box office for the better part of a decade. But there was a lot more involved than simply whacking Robert Downey Jr. in an Iron Man suit and raking in the dough.
2008’s “Iron Man” was, of course, where it all started, with the Jon Favreau-directed film proving a massive hit and changing Hollywood forever. But even getting to the point where they could start producing an Iron Man movie proved to be a journey of its own for Marvel. In 2005 the Wall Street Journal reported that the company had secured a “$525 million, seven-year debt facility to finance 10 films based on its comic-book characters,” courtesy of the fine folks over at Merrill Lynch. The idea was for Marvel to finance its own movies to increase their own profits, gain greater creative control, and generally just have more oversight of the movie-making process. Prior to that, Marvel had licensed numerous characters to other studios, most famously handing the movie rights for Spider-Man over to Sony and X-Men to Fox. With this half-a-billion loan, however, the company was free to finance its own films based on the remaining characters.
Those characters included Captain America, Hulk, Thor, and of course Iron Man himself, alongside a range of other even lesser-known heroes. So how did the Marvel suits decide to let the tin man out the gate first? Well, apparently it was all down to some kids.