Robert Downey J. Says Marvel Originally Expected Iron Man to Flop

We often forget how great of an actor Robert Downey Jr. is. Before basically birthing the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with Iron Man in 2008 (There was the Hulk before but let's not pretend it wasn't meh), he was a '90s Hollywood stud. Some of his best work were seen in Richard III, Short Cuts, Chaplin, and True Believer, among others. And that was just in the late '80s to the '90s. In the 2000s, it was with films like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Good Night, And Good Luck that Downey Jr. was at the peak of his powers (post-rehab).

Of course, the pop culture phenomenon that was the MCU was something else. Can we really imagine another Iron Man? Recently, the rumor mill is saying that we might even see Tony Stark come back for the Secret Wars. Only time will tell. Interestingly, however, Marvel Studios wasn't too keen on Iron Man at first, according to a report by Hollywood Reporter Chris Gardner. In a recent Directors Guild of America Q&A about his Netflix documentary, Sr., Downey Jr. explained that the movie that started a whole decade worth of Marvel films was expected to fail.

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>p>p"Well, I mean first of all, not too many people were thinking 'Iron Man was going to have an opening weekend or do much of anything, so we were a little bit left alone," he told audiences. "I find out more every day about how that thing was financed. It was basically ready to be written off if it tanked.">pThe studio had left them alone supposedly because producers thought it was going to be just an okay film at the box office. Ultimately, Iron Man made $585 million worldwide, based on numbers from Box Office Mojo.>pALSO READ:>pAvengers: Endgame’s “I Love You 3,000" Is a Real Line From Robert Downey Jr.’s Life>pRobert Downey Jr. Has a Pretty Great Reason for Retiring as Iron Man>p

RDJ talks about how he’s still learning things about Iron Man, how it was financed and how the studio was prepared to write it off if it failed. (He also does a great Jeff Bridges impression). pic.twitter.com/BZS9AwzD40>pDecember 12, 2022

>p"It was the perfect thing where there were not a lot of creatively aggressive eyes on us," Downey Jr. noted. "And by the time they gave it to us, it was like United Artists, like the lunatics took over the asylum. He even recalled how Jeff Bridges said that Iron Man felt like a "$200-million independent movie.">pWe all know how that went down after. Downey Jr. became the MCU Godfather, appearing or being referenced in basically every other Marvel film. He left the franchise after Avengers: Endgame. These days, RDJ is up to big things. He has Oppenheimer with Christopher Nolan coming up and had just recently released Sr., a documentary about his filmmaker father. We might also get to see him in Sherlock Holmes 3. Here's to seeing more of RDJ very soon... Or maybe in Iron Man 4? Let's feed the speculation.>p