Here we are in 2019, and Marvel Studios is due to release another three blockbuster movies that’ll likely collectively earn billions of dollars at the box office. As we’ve got used to the studio’s endless stream of hits over the past few years, it’s easy to forget how much of a gamble the idea of creating a shared universe based around a comic book property that wasn’t all too familiar to anyone outside of fans was 10 years ago.
It was such a gamble, in fact, that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has now said that at one point, he had fears that Iron Man wouldn’t make it into theaters. The producer was speaking to Variety about Marvel’s many achievements over the past decade or so when he admitted that he worried the franchise wouldn’t even make it off the ground back in the day.
“It’s surreal. In one way it’s incredibly satisfying. In the other way it’s nearly unbelievable from where we started. There were days when I wasn’t sure we would be able to get Iron Man in theaters. There were days when I thought [The] Avengers was a pipe dream. And there were days after Avengers where I thought, ‘Well, where do we go?’”
Those with long memories will recall just how much was riding on that first movie in the MCU, which introduced audiences to Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, being a success. It’s even come out since then that backers were so reluctant to commit to funding Iron Man that the studio agreed to sell off more of their properties, as they’d done with the likes of Spider-Man and X-Men already, if the film flopped. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that.
In fact, the exact opposite scenario played out and the MCU’s success reaches a peak this April with Avengers: Endgame, which will feature Iron Man teaming up with numerous other heroes. Not to mention that the X-Men are set to come home once the Disney-Fox merger goes through, too. Clearly, if you’d told Feige all of this ten years ago, he wouldn’t have believed you.