Ike Perlmutter Axed Iron Man 3 Female Villain

Marvel Studios has been taking flak as of late for the lack of female centric movies as well as related merchandise.

Well, that looks to be changing as it’s known Marvel CEO Ike Permutter was the one putting the kibosh on female-related projects at Marvel Studios.

The good news is that Marvel Studios president and producer Kevin Feige recently parted ways with Perlmutter and his Marvel TV/comics creative committee.

Leaked Sony e-mails revealed Perlmutter put a stop to female Marvel movies citing Elektra, Catwoman and Supergirl as being disasters.

There was also little to no merchandise for Black Widow from Avengers 2 (or Scarlet Witch).

Now it’s become known an early draft for Iron Man 3 actually featured a female villain, buy that, too, was put a stop to by Perlmutter.

Iron Man 3 director Shane Black talked with Uproxx about working on the movie where he let it be known Killian was originally female, but apparently Perlmutter (who is in charge of Marvel merchandise, TV and comics) axed the idea:

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. 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.

So, we had to change the entire script because of toy making. Now, that’s not Feige. That’s Marvel corporate, but now you don’t have that problem anymore.

Yeah, Ike’s gone. But New York called and said, “That’s money out of our bank.” In the earlier draft, the woman was essentially Killian – and they didn’t want a female Killian, they wanted a male Killian. I liked the idea, like Remington Steele, you think it’s the man but at the end, the woman has been running the whole show. They just said, “no way.”

I remember Remington Steele probably better than it is. But just so you know, too, I’m a Kevin Feige fan. If you ever say anything about decisions made at Marvel, I hope you’ll qualify it by saying that Kevin Feige is the guy who gets it right. And I don’t know if it was Ike, I don’t know who it was. 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.

Black also confirms two other female roles were cut short in Iron Man 3:

We had troubles. Memories are short. You can go through hell together, then six months later go, “That was kind of fun, wasn’t it, John?” The good news is, Downey and I seem to get on pretty well. We’ll bicker now and again, but to me just having him on board elevates the material. So, the toughness was in the logistics instead of the relationships. That’s the good news. We replaced a lot of things. The plot went this way and that way. Stéphanie Szostak’s character was bigger at one point and we reduced it. Rebecca Hall’s character was bigger at one point and we reduced it.

Marvel Studios has the female driven Captain Marvel movie set for a 2018 release.