Sean Callagy

So what I'm hearing you say

And what you're hearing David say, I believe, is that he opted not to go with the ecosystem at Marvel of Avengers with 100,000 people reading monthly, but went with 5,000.

and this was landing on me, I can't even imagine the feedback you were getting for that.

Oh, we had many debates internally, yeah.

Many debates with the board and with my team.

But the feeling was best to introduce the characters in their own movies so that you have two hours to get to know them.

rather than if they're in a two hour movie together, you maybe have 15 minutes with each of them really.

And so if people fell in love with Tony Stark, with Thor, with Captain America, with Hulk, then you bring them together in the Avengers, there's so much more ties to the customer and you're giving them something to look forward to.

They love the characters individually.

The risk with that is if Iron Man failed, we're not sitting here today.

It was easier for me because I knew that my mother, my girlfriend at the time, they would not go see just a regular superhero movie, a comics movie.

But I knew Tony Stark was such an interesting character outside of the suit of armor.

I think that's what Warner Brothers missed, is they saw a guy in a robot suit.

They saw a robot suit.

They didn't see the man inside the suit.

And it's the man inside the suit which was so important and such a compelling story.

And so we went with Iron Man.

And then in making these decisions about how to both show the movie and market the movie and the casting,

That's where, when you talk about instinct and combining with, when you're focused on something that you're passionate about and you don't deviate, somehow you get so much information because you're looking at everything from the prism of what your goal is.

And so when I quit McKinsey and came to Hollywood, all I did for the next six, seven years was think about how to make another Star Wars.