Iron Man Co-Writer Mark Fergus Details “Crapshoot” Launch of Marvel Cinematic Universe

It's easy to look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe almost two decades later and assume that producer Kevin Feige's grand vision for a shared comic book universe onscreen was always destined to become the biggest and most influential Hollywood trend of the 21st century.

But back in 2008, the idea was simply a laughable notion, particularly because Iron Man was not the household brand hero we all think of today. In fact, arms dealer turned superhero Tony Stark and his metallurgical alter ego were basically considered bargain basement IP when compared to heavy hitters like the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man.

"The MCU thing was a bit of a crapshoot," Mark Fergus—one of the four credited screenwriters on Iron Man alongside Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway—recalled during a wider interview with SYFY WIRE about his work on Children of Men. "No one was excited about the proposition of an MCU. Iron Man was kind of a benchwarmer in the pantheon of Marvel. He wasn't a cool, badass character."

Iron Man co-screenwriter recalls the underdog nature of the very first MCU project

The longtime writing duo of Fergus and Ostby were brought onto the project by Jon Favreau following the director's exit from the ill-fated John Carter adaptation (ultimately helmed by Pixar vet Andrew Stanton). Despite Iron Man's B-list status, Favreau and the two writers were excited by the challenge of turning a semi-obscure superhero into a blockbuster sensation with Robert Downey Jr., an actor who had largely been written off by Hollywood because of his checkered past.

"No one thinks this is cool, no one thinks this is badass, no one thinks any of this is going to work," Fergus recounted. "That's exactly our favorite scenario and I think the first one has a weird energy because there was no guarantee of success. Once the MCU passed that movie, every movie since has been [huge]—it's just a matter of how huge. But that first one felt like, 'We're just gonna leave it all on the field and see what happens. But this could totally fail, despite our best intentions.' That was really fun because there's no net and you're up there, doing your own thing."

As we now know, the experiment paid off big-time. The film grossed half a billion dollars worldwide, while reinvigorating Robert Downey Jr.'s career and launching one of the most ambitious, not to mention lucrative, filmmaking initiatives of all time. To date, the Marvel Cinematic Universe comprises almost 40 feature films, over 10 television shows, and more than $30 billion in global box office sales.

The great irony is that for all the doubt over his casting, Downey Jr. ended up becoming inextricably linked with the MCU. So much so that Marvel Studios is bringing him back to play big bad Doctor Doom in the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars (a move that feels like a blatant Hail Mary play to recapture fans who checked out after Endgame).

"I was really pleased to see how much Downey was a frickin' super-star," Fergus continued. "It was really Kevin's vision for the larger thing and it just started to snowball [from there]. But I think what excited us was we loved the challenge of the underdog project. No one was rooting for Iron Man. I was in Starbucks and people were making fun of the billboard. They were snarking about Downey and kind of making fun of it. I was like, 'Alright, f--kers. You'll see.' But I didn't know it was gonna succeed ... Then it just came out, and people fell for it. That was the most fun of it—the not knowing if it's gonna succeed. If you know, then it's not really fun."