IRON MAN 3 Scrapped Its Original Female Villain Because Marvel Didn't Think The Character Would Sell Enough Toys
We had heard Iron Man 3 was a bit of a troubled production, but in a candid interview director Shane Black reveals a few startling new details about Marvel Corporate's unwanted involvement...
Iron Man 3 was an entertaining enough flick, but it's generally considered to be one of Marvel's lesser movies. Many fans couldn't forgive the Mandarin twist, nor the fact that the villain of the piece, Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian, was... well, a bit crap.
During an interview with Uproxx, director Shane Black admits that although he and Robert Downey Jr. had fun shooting the movie, there were some issues with the studio stepping in and forcing a few changes - particularly where the female characters were concerned. Black says originally both Stéphanie Szostak and Rebecca Hall had bigger roles, and the baddie was also going to be a woman.
"All I’ll say is this, on the record: There was an early draft of Iron Man 3 where we had an inkling of a problem. Which is that we had a female character who was the villain in the draft. We had finished the script and we were given a no-holds-barred memo saying that cannot stand and we’ve changed our minds because, after consulting, we’ve decided that toy won’t sell as well if it’s a female."
Apparently the original idea was to have a female villain pulling the strings much like the Killian character, but Marvel Corporate - Black stresses this was nothing to do with Kevin Feige, but the since deposed Ike Perlmutter - felt that would be taking "money out of our bank."
Pretty crazy stuff we're sure you'll agree. There's more from Black over at Uproxx - including his thoughts on that Mandarin twist and the unexpected fan backlash.