The first part of this article is a solid outline for a piece of news that never arrived. It is full of facts and all quotes are accurate, but it is also based on the false belief that Saturday was the premiere of Iron Man on cable TV—it was not.
Jon Fav Tweets Fan During Broadcast and a Look Back at the 2008 Marvel/FX partnership:
FX Loves the Comic Book Movies!
On Saturday cable network FX held the cable television premiere of Iron Man. To fill you in, let’s run back to the Variety article from March 16th, 2008 which announced a deal between Marvel Studios and FX to have the cable television premieres of Iron Man, as well as the Incredible Hulk and the next three Marvel films (now called Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain A)
To quote the 2008 Variety article, “As with most of the basic-cable pre-buys, the net agrees to pony up a license fee that hovers at around 11% of the domestic gross, a figure that cuts off at $200 million. If all five movies end up as $200 million-plus blockbusters -- a very big if, of course -- FX would pay the maximum $22 million apiece for a grand total of $110 million” (Dempsey, Variety).
Well that “big if” worked out well for Marvel, over 200 million for each of the first three films. I doubt FX is complaining for the higher rate, paying more but it was well worth it. Iron Man ranked high in the Nielson TV Ratings for Saturday night with (blank#of) viewers proving the worthiness of the comic book movie. As par to the agreement, all day Saturday leading up to the film, FX played out a barrage of comic book movies leading into the cable premiere. With all five films now announced, finished or finishing up, perhaps we are not too far off from an announcement of an extension of the Marvel/FX partnership.
For those watching, it seemed Saturday’s Iron Man included some additional footage—an alternate cut? The film did in fact include some additional scenes edited into the movie as one fan discovered on Twitter during the broadcast.
BrendonKyle: @Jon_Favreau IRON MAN on FX is showing scenes I've never seen before or am I crazy?
Jon_Favreau: @BrendonKyle: Not crazy. FX asked to include some deleted scenes.
Always good to see a director reaching out to his fans—especially to see a fan favorite like Jon Fav continuingly giving back the love. Catch the film and additional footage on the FX network.
(Source: “Marvel strike super deal” By JOHN DEMPSEY, Variety March 2008 http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117982510?refCatId=1236, Brendon Kyle, http://twitter.com/ - !/BrendonKyle)
Okay so at this point, this is where my investigation takes a turn. At the point of writing all this I believe what I am saying and I am waiting to get the Nielson Cable Network ratings from Saturday night. Who knows depending on the ratings I will tweak the article but I started the set-up of this nice little outline after catching Iron Man on FX, the commercials and details created an assumption it was the cable television premiere. So I look into it, find the Variety article from 2008 referencing the partnership--good information! So I attempt to check whether it was in fact the premiere searching for Iron Man and FX Cable Network and such. I come across a post on advancediron.org, this kid says he tweeted Jon Fav during the broadcast and Jon Fav tweeted back. I think cool and go to Jon Fav’s twitter look back to Saturday night. And there it is BrendonKyle tweets and Jon_favreau tweets back. Cool, so I again assume this was the premiere and add the Jon Fav twittering to the article. And eventually, while I am searching the net for Saturday’s ratings, waiting for them to arrive, I decided to look for that post again by the kid saying he tweeted Jon Fav. I want to source his post and not just his Twitter.
The advancediron.org post reads:
Iron Man broadcast on FX: new stuff added in
January 11, 2011, 10:12:26 PM
I only caught bits and pieces, as I was working. But I saw the tail-end of Yinsen "attacking" Tony in front of the terrorists. I tweeted to Favreau on Twitter, and he responded (COOL!!!!):
"Yes. Tho I prefer official cut. RT @hmcknight: Iron Man on FX--are there new scenes that were edited in for the broadcast viewing?"
Interesting. I may watch it when it airs again on FX Wednesday night”(MetalHead)
I am reading it, I see the date, and it says January 11, 2011. I am thinking that is odd. I go to Jon Fav’s twitter again, for certain, during the weekends broadcast, fan tweets about added scenes while watching Iron Man on FX, Jon_Favareu tweets back
@Jon_Favreau IRON MAN on FX is showing scenes I've never seen before...or am I crazy?
Jon_Favreau: @BrendonKyle: Not crazy. FX asked to include some deleted scenes.
Okay so the advancediron post is dated wrong or the kid is in another country or something. Okay back to the January 11 post, let’s see, yikes wait a second, back to Jon_Favreau twitter, scroll down to January 11th:
Jon_Favreau: Yes. Tho I prefer official cut. RT @hmcknight: Iron Man on FX--are there new scenes that were edited in for the broadcast viewing?
So the news or morale of the story, Jon_Favreau will tweet you if you mention that it seems like there is additional scenes during the broadcast of Iron Man on FX (or Iron Man 2 when it premieres).
(Sources: post by MetalHead http://www.advancediron.org/forums/index.php?topic=5179.0, twitter.com/#!/jon_favareau, twitter.com/#!/hmcknight, twitter.com/#!/brendonkyle)