Disney CEO Underestimated Marvel And Paid The Price

This information about Bob Iger’s cockiness regarding the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film comes to us courtesy of the book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios. One passage describes how Iger met with David Maisel, a friendly former colleague who had previously worked for Disney.

Maisel actually had a hot tip for the CEO: that he should change the release date of the upcoming Narnia film so that it didn’t have to compete with Tony Stark.

To contextualize this warning to Bob Iger, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian came out on May 16, 2008 and Marvel Studios’ Iron Man came out on May 2, 2008.

This was early into summer blockbuster season, and it was common (and still is) for movie studios to shuffle release dates around so that big titles don’t directly compete with each other. Iger’s unwillingness to budge on the release date of his fantasy film boiled down to one simple fact: he didn’t see Iron Man as a threat to his bottom line.

It didn’t take very long for Bob Iger to realize he made a mistake in underestimating this Marvel movie, though: Prince Caspian went on to earn $419.6 million against a budget of $225 million.

Not exactly a box office bomb, but this was seen as a major disappointment because the previous film (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) earned $745 million against a budget of only $180 million. The math was easy enough for even the fantasy franchise’s biggest fans to see: Disney spent way more to make way less.

Later, Bob Iger tried to contextualize what happened with this sequel film and he had to effectively give credit Marvel Studios. He noted how Prince Caspian came out between Iron Man and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and while the latter has become something of a punchline, it was one of 2008’s biggest summer blockbusters.

What he left out of his justification for the bad box office was, of course, that he had been warned ahead of time that his latest movie could suffer going up against Tony Stark.

However, say what you will about Bob Iger, but he learns from his mistakes: Disney ended up buying Marvel in late 2009, about a year and a half after Iron Man came out. That movie (and, to a lesser degree, the Edward Norton Hulk film) helped the CEO realize just how lucrative the Marvel brand could be. Disney ended up buying Marvel in its entirety, and the rest is entertainment history.

These days, the MCU brand is not nearly as polished as it once was, but films like Deadpool & Wolverine have proven that it still has some juice left. As fans, learning more about the successful early days helps us appreciate how impressive the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been from the beginning. Bob Iger couldn’t build Iron Man with a box of scraps a la Tony Stark, but he proved he could do the next best thing: just buy the entire box from Marvel.