A new report claims that the plans to have a female villain character in the “Iron Man 3” movie failed after executives feared the character doll would provide lower toy sales than the male ones.
In a recent interview to promote one of his upcoming movies, director Shane Black admitted to UPROXX that in 2013 he had an early draft of the movie that included a female villain but was told that “women don’t sell toys.”
“We replaced a lot of things,” Black said. “The plot went this way and that way. Stéphanie Szostak’s character was bigger at one point, and we reduced it.” Adding, “Rebecca Hall’s character was bigger at one point, and we reduced it.”
“All I’ll say is this, on the record: There was an early draft of Iron Man 3 where we had an inkling of a problem,” the director said. “Which is that we had a female character who was the villain in the draft. We had finished the script and we were given a no-holds-barred memo saying that cannot stand and we’ve changed our minds because, after consulting, we’ve decided that toy won’t sell as well if it’s a female.”
Black wanted to stress the decision had not come from Marvel Studios president but identified “Marvel corporate” and then “New York” as responsible. The report says that equals pointing a finger at Ike Perlmutter who left Marvel Studios in 2105 as part of “reorganization.”
“I don’t know if it was Ike, I don’t know who it was,” the director stressed, not naming Perlmutter. “They never told me who made the decision, we just got that memo one day and it was about toy sales. That’s all I know.”