Gerry Rich on Selling 'Iron Man' When Nobody Believed in It

By Daniel Okafor

Gerry Rich helped open "Iron Man" in 2008, and he has now written a memoir about it. The book, "Chasing Hollywood: A Marketing Chief's Lessons on Breaking Through," is the subject of the latest episode of Variety's "Strictly Business" podcast.

Rich's résumé covers most of Hollywood's major studios: Paramount, Columbia Pictures, MGM, Miramax and Amazon MGM Studios. In the interview he looks back at the Marvel launch and ahead at what AI is doing to audience targeting.

What has changed since the 'Iron Man' era?

Plenty, according to Rich. The mass-audience toolbox has emptied out.

"Going back even a decade or two we had the ability to reach a broad audience all at one time. Through linear television and cable and sports and digital and social media, we were able to hit a broad swath of the audience in real time," Rich says. "It's much more difficult to do that now, particularly with linear TV. The only thing that really gets a significant audience is would be live sports, particularly football. That's where we're assured of getting a captive audience, a broad audience, a significant audience all at once. All of that has changed quite a bit."

That's the shift in one quote. A marketer who once bought the whole country in a single prime-time spot now chews audiences into fragments and reassembles them with algorithms.

How did 'Iron Man' get sold?

The 2008 campaign faced three doubts at once, Rich recalls. The character wasn't famous. The star was risky. The director was unproven at scale.

"Iron Man didn't have the notoriety as IP as Spider-Man or X-Men or any of the better known characters. So there was some uncertainty as to whether or not Iron Man would be able to resonate for the broadest audience and deliver superhero-type grosses," Rich says.

"There was also a lot of skepticism about whether Robert Downey Jr. was the right guy to play this character, this flawed character. And there was a lot of questions as to whether or not [director] Jon Favreau could deliver a movie with the adequate and necessary scope and scale."

Downey Jr. carried real baggage then. His public battles with personal demons had, as Rich puts it, inevitably hurt his star power. And the industry was skeptical there was even a market for an elevated superhero movie.

What was the campaign's turning point?

Comic-Con, July 2007. Rich's team held back every asset from the film until then — no stills, no teaser, nothing — well before the release.

"But we really felt and as soon as we saw dailies that there was something really extraordinary happening with that movie," he says.

The rollout at San Diego was deliberately theatrical. The studio brought the entire crew down. Favreau walked out to thunderous applause, iPhone in hand, recording the crowd's response himself.

"He just had the group from the very beginning. We showed the teaser trailer that we were going to launch, as well as some film footage, and the audience was sold. They came out as major champions of the film."

The gamble worked. "Iron Man" launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the franchise that now dominates global box office), and the Comic-Con-first playbook became industry standard.

Rich's memoir, published now as AI reshapes targeting, doubles as a record of a marketing era that no longer exists — and a reminder that its biggest win started with a room of 6,000 skeptics won over in person.