Early Marvel Executives Didn't Want to Use Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" Song in IRON MAN
Marvel Studios was making a huge gamble on Iron Man. They didn’t know if it would have been a hit or miss with audiences. For that movie to succeed it really needed to hit the sweet spot, and luckily, director Jon Favreau managed to make it work and deliver the magic.
I was at Comic-Con in San Diego in Hall H when Iron Man was first revealed to the world. I remember that day! This was the Comic-Con that helped inspire us to launch GeekTyrant, and we had no idea what to expect. During the Marvel panel, Black Sabbath’s iconic song “Iron Man” dropped and the fans went freakin’ bonkers because they knew what was coming! Then, the trailer dropped and so did every fan’s jaw when the footage screened. That was a magical experience, it was the birth of the MCU.
Well, it turns out that some of the early executives at Marvel tried to cut the “Iron Man” song! They simply didn’t understand the importance of it, which is crazy to me.
The book The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe tells the story of how Kevin Feige and his creative team managed to convince decision-makers at the time to get the song. The execs didn’t want to spend the money on purchasing the rights to it.
The former SVP of Production and Development, Jeremy Latcham, tried to talk the execs into just paying the royalties because it made sense. This was seriously a last-minute plea that thankfully ended up working, and it had a big payoff. Latcham explained:
"I said, 'Here's what I know—you guys pay me to tell you what I think is cool. I'm telling you that this piece [of music] is cool. I'm telling you that if you take the 'Iron Man' song out of this piece, it is not cool. It's a binary thing.' We finally got them to agree to pay Ozzy Osbourne, so now we finally had the Comic-Con piece… a week before Comic-Con.”
That Black Sabbath song primed the fans for what was going to come. It built up the excitement and momentum for what was to come, and that excitement still hasn’t stopped! It’s still crazy to see how far Marvel has come and what they’ve built over the years!
Via: CB