YouSaid · the spoken record

David Maisel

lines on the record: 156
first: 2023-06-07
most recent: 2023-06-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Got for the timing on that one, not being halfway through. The butterfly effect of no new Marvel Studios for Disney to have, for no Avengers movie because one of the things we didn't talk about is if the movies are all licensed at different studios, they never get mixed together. So to create Avengers, to mix the characters, we had to own and keep the rights ourselves. And so just legally, these characters would never be mixed together and there wouldn't be this interrelated universe. And the ripple effect and everything else is so big. And I do think as people think about their lives and they think about their decisions, you know, we all have that butterfly effect.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I appreciate that. And I will think about that also for part two. But I think we went into a lot of details about what happened in 2003 through the sale of Disney in 2010, whether it be financing or distribution or the sale. And I think stepping back for a second. Was also a simple pursuit of something you really believed in and that you're passionate about. And when I think to myself, what happens if I didn't go to Marvel or if I didn't take that meeting or didn't hire me or if I took the Michael Jackson didn't get arrested?”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That coming, that's wild, yeah. And if there's no legacy, then it's just purely new, like you can't get into the geekiness of, like, with pipes. How was it done 100 years ago? And look at this pipe is collectible or whatever, you know, like you don't have all that. And if it's completely legacy, but it's so big, then there's no thrill of discovery, right? So it's the balance on the scale of those things.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's like But there's something fun like pipe smoking is a good example. That's a legacy activity that we understand our grandparents did and people before them, but it still felt new when you talked about it with Kevin, you know? And Marvel was legacy, but for most people, they never read the comics. It was new for them to talk with their friends. Did you see Iron Man? Did you see all that?”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They feel is adding to their lives, and somehow whether they sense it or it's just subconscious. That's what all mythologies from Greek and Roman onward have done or before even Greek and Roman mythology. And it has to be something, I think James Cameron with Avatar has probably done the best since Marvel came out with big cultural moments. Now he does things every 10 years though, right? But that was an original idea. I think the next thing probably is a legacy property, but it's still like Marvel, it had history, but people could discover it together. So it was the perfect combination. And I think people love to discover something with their friends and the idea of the new band or something in new technology. Like there's just something great. You know, I hear you and Kevin talking on podcasts and two friends discovering things together, whether it be pipe smoke.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Introduced in new ways that you sort of tease with new technologies and new ways of storytelling probably has to be way more primal and visual. So it gets people's quick attention. They can see what's there. I think it has to have great meaning, Tim. Marvel had a good meaning in that it's great to be a hero. And I think people relate to something that”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Has to be pretty special to pop into what we would call universe category or major, potentially new mythology. And I'd love to talk about that more because it is something that a lot of people do ask about. And a lot of people are focused on. Obviously, DC just hired a new person to run DC after 20 years of us being able to do what we did at Marvel. David Zaslov, when he bought Warner Brothers from AT&T, said, I want to copy Marvel. I want to do what Marvel did. But we did that 15, 20 years ago. So it shows you even DC hasn't gotten their act together in the same way. And that's a very well-capitalized company with a large number of properties. So it's very hard for a new universe to get created. I don't think it's impossible, but it's got to be differentiated from Marvel so that there's a reason that it exists. I think it has to be interesting.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So high and so much tougher because now you're competing against Marvel. So when I launched in 2008, Iron Man, we had DC as a competitor. We had the Marvel licensed movies, you know, Fox with X-Men, Sony with Spider-Man. They were not just competitors. They could use the Marvel brand. So they were like weird competitors. We were scared about all these people. But in retrospect, we had a relatively open playing field because we didn't have ourselves to compete with. The version of Marvel today, which just dominates so much. And we didn't have streaming. We didn't have as much social media, all these other distractions on people's time. And it was tough, but it's like, you know, it's the old saying, like, how good we had it, you know, we didn't realize it's still very tough. But now it's even harder. So something that goes through the filter you're talking about.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love how you said film or some other type of immersive world. I think that's very savvy, by the way. And we can get into that in the next discussion because I don't believe launching the next universe is going to happen like Marvel did through theatrical film. I think it's going to start with something else and most likely will because of the way the world has changed. So I think the question and the topic as a tease for this next thing, when I left Marvel, I had to figure out who I was from a person point of view. Like people still want to talk to me if I wasn't running Marvel Studios, right? Would I still be able to go to restaurants and things like that? Who my real friends were? And then from a business point of view, what would catch my eye? And what I'd say is because of Marvel Within Disney and the power of the two together and because of how well Kevin has run Marvel since, Marvel's gotten so big that the bar to launch a new universe has gotten”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's probably the live action movie I would most like to make as an individual movie. You know what I mean? Which could be interesting”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guess are hearing Marvel Studios was a startup within the parent company of Marvel, but it was one that had to raise its own money. It got the IP from the parent company. But other than that, we had to manage it, raise our own money, do our own deals. And I was speaking to a tech entrepreneur this past weekend in Florida from one of the biggest tech companies in the world. And he was very intrigued about how Marvel Studios was a startup, just like his company was at the time.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me was personally in addition to the deal time, it was sort of exciting to think about my next venture and scary because I didn't quite know who I was outside of my role at Marvel and what that person would be. But besides that, the deal went through pretty well. And the price of it we got $4 billion, which was about $3.8 billion more than the price when I joined. And we ran a lot of scenarios when I presented to the board in 2004, but the main scenario valued the new studio as potentially in the three to four billion dollar range. And it came out close enough to that. And, you know, our comic division and other things had not really grown too much. Our toy division, we went from making toys to licensing, which was sounds like a minor thing, but it was big at the time. But pretty much it was a lot of people now.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think from a deal perspective, besides negotiating the percentage in Disney stock, we were pretty close to what Bob and I spoke to in that first meeting. And then it became about keeping Marvel as a separate company within Disney. So the culture didn't get messed up. And I specifically wanted to step aside and I told Bob about Kevin, how I thought he could run the Marvel entity within Disney in a uniquely great way. And then Bob got to meet Kevin and see for himself. And so that was a big part because personally, I wanted to go on to different ventures and different parts of my life. And selling to Disney allowed me to do that in a very clean way, both financially with other shareholders to be able to afford that and then to easier to leave a company when it's a division of a bigger company than by itself. So that”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's very atypical. We could have really blown this, Tim. I mean. I mean, we went a lot with our instincts and the collective group. And I'm trying to remember if we ever had one, I don't recall it happening.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know exactly where we met, but I think we met at one point when he was interested in buying endeavor when I was working with Ari in the early days. And that deal didn't go anywhere, but Ron and I became friends. And then he watched my career at Marvel and the relationship grew deeper. He also was, we had Leo as a mutual friend. And so we had social acquaintances in common as well. The intersection with the Marvel story is I was at his house for a party that night when the box office came out. The night before Iron Man came out, we actually, Kevin and Robert and John and I went to theaters together to see the Thursday night shows. And that was a blast because it was the first time we saw a live audience watching the films. We didn't test market these movies at all. That was exciting. We wanted Robert to sell tickets, but they wouldn't let us have him do that.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ron is most famous for owning Ralph's grocery stores. He started as a bagger and became the owner and became a billionaire through that in other investments. And he's notorious as a very savvy investor and a very hard businessman in terms of the terms that he requests for investments. And we met”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they had a wonderful dinner. And I think this is public. Bob had Steve Jobs call Ike and talk to him how well Bob preserved Pixar's culture after the sale. So all of that really helped get this across the finish line.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think that's a trait I saw in Ike all the way through. He's notorious for being very fiscally conservative. And some people mistake that for not being supportive of major decisions. And he did hire me and gave me a chance with Marvel Studios. And here he gave me a chance. He still wasn't convinced, but he at least wanted to hear my case. It took a while to convince him. And then the major thing was Bob and Ike had to get together. And so in the meeting with Bob, I remember Bob said, what do we need to do? He even asked me, what do you want out of this, David? And I said, no, no, you have to make Ike happy. That's the person that has to be convinced. And I had basically understood from Bob that if I didn't want to do something, that this wouldn't go anywhere. So I ranged a meeting in New York where Bob came to the offices at like 9 o'clock at night and he and Ike, I let them go to dinner. I kept back and I didn't ask to go.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or more likely, get your ass back to the office and work on Iron Man 2 and other initiatives that we were doing as a company. But he said flat in New York. Come see me. And I made a reservation to come right away like the next morning or whatever. I rode on the airplane what my scenario planning would be. So he was open-minded to it once I got there and made the case.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I could see the excitement of Bob's eyes. It turns out that they had internally been reviewing options, and Marvel was on their list, though they hadn't proactively contacted anybody, including myself. And I called Ike and I told him, I think I have a buyer for the company. And I thought there would be one of three responses, Tim. Even though Iron Mana came out, even though it was my idea to do the MCU or Marvel, this new Marvel Studios self-financed, self-producing, and connecting the characters, I want to come back to that in a second. But even with all that, I knew Ike might say you're fired. Right on the spot”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of Iron Man in your model. And he's like, no, it should be 60%. No one cares about those characters, whatever. And then I said Iron Man 2 should be like 110% of Iron Man and Avengers should be like 150% of Iron Man. He's like, no, Avengers is a new movie. That should be like Captain America or Thor. And I was like, no, Robert Downey, we had signed up for the Avengers. So it's basically a quasi-Ironman sequel. So all those things were like it's an interesting story because I'm negotiating with someone I worked with that I've known for decades with a company where I worked out intimately. And to your question, though, after that first meeting, I went to that meeting. I didn't even know I was having a meeting. And if he didn't know, he would not be surprised because it would be about a business deal, that kind of stuff. I called Ike from in front of Team Disney after leaving Bob. And I was as pumped about this meeting as I was about Iron Man's box office.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“man everything after Avengers is a sequel to Avengers, which I think has proved to be the case. And that was June, first week of June 2009. We announced the deal the end of August, two months later, and we kept it secret. And they ended up paying, I think it was $51 a share, and we got 40% of it in Disney stock. We wanted 50%. And so that was a great trade for our shareholders and turned out to be one. And, you know, Disney got up to 180 or 200 at some point. Now they're close to 100, even with their correction. And so I remember meeting with Kevin Mayer right after that. We didn't even have a banker. I went through my projections with Kevin. And as friends, we yelled at each other, swore at each other, all that kind of stuff. I remember Kevin saying, I was basically saying for Captain America and Thor, you need to give us credit for like 80%.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We don't. And he took that to his credit and said, then let's think something big. And I remember vividly him saying, I said, I think we would need $50 a share. We need a five in front of it. So we went pretty far in this meeting. And he knew I knew Kevin Mayer and he knew I knew Tom Staggs, who was CFO at the time, I think. And he basically said, well, my board and Kevin and Tom think that's a fair price. And I said, absolutely. I said, I've got this thing planned out for the next 10 years. And so since I had done work for Bob, he, I think, had some trust in that. And we talked about the vision of connecting all the characters and what the future movies were going to be. Iron Man 2 was our next movie. We had delayed Thor. So I knew that would be good to have Iron Man 2 as the next movie because that's predictable. And I explained how we're leading up to the Avengers and how everything after Iron Man would be a sequel to Iron.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With Discovery in Hasbro, which ended up being called the hub. So I remember David Zaslov at the time and Brian Goldner, the CEO of Hasbro, recently passed away. The three of us were working on this, and I was working on this other deal. So I knew that there was a window to sell the company, that six months later, we'd be way less attractive to Disney or anyone else because we'd be committed to somebody else in TV and the somebody else in film. And I was gun-shy. I knew how easily a deal can fall apart from my previous time suggesting this at Disney. So all of that was in my mind in June when I went to see Bob. And I remember telling Bob about our TV deal and with discovery in Hasbro and him saying, hold on, let's do a TV deal at Disney and we'll do a primarily male, but kids, teenager entertainment network. And I joked with him. I said, no, not going to get a little bit pregnant. We either do something big.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whereas we were at two movies a year at best and could be plateaued for a while. And DreamWorks Animation was a company that also had two movies a year and they were plateaued. So all of that in my mind when I saw our stock hit 35 or 36 or 37, I called Bob. We organized a secret meeting in his office for early June. I brought my Marvel Encyclopedia of Characters with me. And that's the meeting where this is news for your readers too. So for your listeners, there was two deals that we had on the table that would have encumbered us. Encumbered means we would have tied up our rights and been way less attractive for a potential purchaser. We were about to extend our distribution deal on the movies beyond what Paramount had to another studio. I won't name them on this thing yet, but we were very close to doing like another 10 or 20 movies to them. And we were about to do a kids TV network.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stepping back for your audience, it wasn't just having meals. Like, I called Bob a couple times with business proposals. One of the time I said, let's do animated movies 50-50. Marvel Disney. So we had a habit of talking about business opportunities, but our stock was so low in February of 2009 that I didn't raise a sale at all. And then importantly, and this is all public because when you do things as a public company, the SEC makes you go back for five years, every email, every meeting, every communication I had with Bob or with Kevin Mayer or anybody else at Disney is public record. I called Bob end of May. Our stock was back up to 35. I felt that Disney stock was also undervalued. It was at $25 a share with the economic collapse. And Disney, as a company, is very sensitive to the economy. People go to theme parks more often. They do stuff like that. And so I felt like I was a big Disney shareholder that Disney, or I follow this stock closely at least, that Disney was at least a double when the economy recovered.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, his wife told us when he was taking a nap one afternoon and we brought it into his driveway. So when he woke up, he saw it in his driveway.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things don't just happen that way in Hollywood. So a lot of what we did in this movie was like film school. Natalie Portman, I was introduced to by Leo DiCapria. We wanted Natalie to be in Thor. She had no desire. Kevin Huvane was her agent to really be in it. And then he knew I wanted her in the movie and he was bowling with her one night and texted me to get dressed and come out to a midnight bowling in Hollywood and he introduced me to her and said you two should work together. So it was really like kids in film school. So it all worked out for everybody. So we did celebrate and then at the end of that night we gave John his new car. But the funniest part was Robert was in on the joke, but there was no car for him. And we did that on purpose so that he got like, where the hell's my car in this mind, right? And so we waited a week so he'd be like wondering how brutal.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Robert Downey, Kevin, and myself to celebrate. And it was like a couple weeks after Iron Man opened. And Kevin and I had suggested to Ike that we buy cars for Robert and John as presents for them. And we had worked with their wives to figure out what cars they want. And so Favro had picked this Mercedes and Robert E. Bentley. And so at Mr. Chow's, we swapped Favro's car. So he drove in with whatever old car he had. And we knew he's going to get his Mercedes. And we brought Robert in on the joke. So I'll come back to that in a second. But at dinner, we celebrated. And I said, guys, I will green light Iron Man 2 if everyone around this table. And I looked at John and Robert and Kevin commit to making it so we can release it, May 2nd, 2010, or whatever the equivalent weekend was, which is really quick for a movie with no script. I think everyone was sort of surprised.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By the way, it's still unreal, like telling the story to you, I still pinch myself every day that I was able to go from reading Iron Man comics to like having this crazy dream to making Marvel into what it is today is crazy. And kids ask me, how do you do that? And I just don't even like, it doesn't happen, right? And so when Iron Man came out and we knew the number, the adrenaline was just huge. Like we had just had the premiere. People seem buzzed about it. But until we got that box office number, you get really busy. Like you have to give quotes right away. And we had a Wall Street analyst meeting coming up like that next Tuesday. And so you get busy doing things, but I probably didn't really celebrate it till later in the summer. It definitely, you know, we did have a dinner this year. People might be interested in. So I organized a dinner at Mr. Chow's, a famous restaurant in LA in Beverly Hills with John Favre.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As it did like the first film, so we weren't expecting it to break out like Iron Man did. But the night Ironman came out, I was at a man named Ron Berkel's house who had become a mentor and still is. And I got a phone call from Rob Moore that at like 6 p.m., hey, we're going to do 60 million. Hour later, 70 million. Every hour went up 10 million. Finally, it had 100 million at like 10 p.m. at night on Friday night. And I knew things had changed for Marvel. They changed for John, Robert, Kevin, and I.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kevin and I, and I think John and Robert, we were so immersed in making the movie and we felt so good about it that for some reason, that lack of confidence in the Wall Street or otherwise didn't affect us too much. But it was there and it's important to realize that because I was having lunch with Bob Eiger probably once a year since I joined. Kevin Mayer and I'd wear my Spider-Man tie and stuff like that. But it was only after the Iron Man came out that I really start thinking where does this company go? And we had Hulk coming out a month later. And that film a lot of people misunderstand. They're like wondering why we did it. And like I said, we did it to get the rights back for Hulk as a supporting character in movies like The Avengers. And we had to make that movie for that. And we planned the budget of that movie to do break-even as long as.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, even Paramount projected we're going to do about 40 or 50 million for the weekend. And my board came finally to LA. They didn't care about it really too much from that point of view. But we had the premiere. And I remember my board telling me that Kevin and I would get, I think it was a half a million dollar bonus each if the film broke even. And so that was my own company was like, hey, Attaboy, the way to go breaks even. We'll make money on the choice, you know? And so, you know, I think we were immune to it. I think.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“David's, we're doing this really in smart, creative way, and people are going to love it. It sounded like I was crazy on the street, you know?”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It to you Sure. It's so as we're making the film. I mentioned that things went smoothly from spring of 2006 to May 2nd, 2008. They didn't really go smoothly in terms of people's perception of the movie. They went smoothly in us making it, us feeling good about it. But nobody really believed. Our stock went down for four and a half years. So I gave in my options for a 19 bucks a share. When Iron Man came out, I think the stock was trading like $18 a share. And I was not for lack of trying. I mean, I was on CNBC, touting Marvel, Ike famously doesn't really care about press, but even he agreed we should do press. And so we had articles in Business Week at the time and Fortune and Financial Times and all these other places. And New York Times as well, a famous article that I keep by my office door, which talks about all the risks about Marvel. This was like a 2006 or 2007 article at the end of the article. I'm like.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Realized how it affected their lives. They'd go home and tell their kids with the guy who founded Marvel Studios and not everyone gets to meet us and have these discussions. And I realized Marvel brings a lot of joy in people's lives. I just flew back from Miami yesterday and I have a Marvel bag with me and the security guy at the airport was all excited. He helped me through security, which was a good benefit. So there's actually a selfish benefit of carrying a Marvel bag.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the license deals, of which I would not have been able to open some of the doors I did. And Kevin, I'm as big as fan, but I'm proud of my vision for Marvel Studios and where it came from me. And whether it's my future wife or it's people listening to this podcast, that's part of who I am. I'm proud of going there and making it happen and putting on all those different hats that we talked about that were needed at the time. And I'm proud of handing the baton to Kevin and the sale to Disney. And so there's enough great credit for everybody to have and hopefully everybody sees that once all the facts come out. And so that's been, you know, this is a big step in talking about PR. And it's fun to tell the story to people. There's so many different angles to it. And the other part that's been a big influence is when my mom was recently sick, a lot of the doctors and nurses and other people around her I'd have time with and I would tell them the story.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About one famously in the cover of Van Deta a few years ago. And the same author of that article is writing a book that's coming out on the history of Marvel Studios coming out in November, Joanna Robinson, who now has done her research and knows the story that we've talked through and realizes the mistake that they made. So the past couple years, I've realized two things. I mean, one, I enjoy telling the story. It's a big part of who I am. My friends knew people like Brian Lord and Kevin Uvane and my Hollywood friends knew and the people in Hollywood that mattered. But even in many cases, if they don't see it written and so on, it gets confusing. So I've realized that if you care about something, it's important to be part of the narrative. Luckily for Marvel, it's so big and has done so well that there's plenty of shine to share. As I mentioned, Avi, I give him full credit.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I open the door on the PR side, it would just be a route that didn't interest me at the time. And I'd be talking about the past all the time. And I did well with the sales of Marvel to Disney. And so obviously I could have afford PR people. And I just never did that. And that was my reason. I always thought truth always prevailed. And we've learned in a lot of parts of our lives in the past eight years that that's truth is fungible. And so It was something where by being quiet, there was a lot of confusion about all the stuff that we talked about. And I found my story essentially being somewhat rewritten out of history, which is really weird when it's eight years of your life and something that was your vision and dream, to the point of articles being written where they just didn't even mention what we just talked about.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It relates to what you're about to ask me to sail to Disney, which I try to live life intentionally. And one of the things that I've tried to avoid is to get too focused on my own, I guess, ego, for lack of a better word. One of the reasons I sold the company to Disney, one big reason was shareholder value and get the best price. And the other was me personally, I was okay with it because I wanted to venture away and do new challenges. I realized that”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He is. We had a blast on set, and the other thing John did really well to your point there is we didn't freeze the script on Iron Man, which most people would say is crazy because each day costs $300 or $500,000 depending on the day of cost. So if you miss your day and you don't finish everything, you blow that money. But we kept time for Robert to improvise and John managed that and Kevin and they did a great job. And John is the director and so many of the lines that you probably love that so many people love came out of Robert improvising. And that was a risk. And I felt very secure in that given John's expertise, like you say.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we needed to make it more Shakespearean where the father figure of Obadiah was the villain. And so I went in as studio chairman where I could have dictated that and told John Favreau and Kevin were chopping off that part of the movie. But instead I went in, I remember first calling Ike and John and telling them what I thought about and my discomfort and then going in and calling a meeting and recommending it and explaining why to John and to Kevin and to the team rather than just ordering it. And to their credit, they embraced it pretty quickly. And that became, which we had to do because we were pretty close to getting to production. And that, I think, made the story we all believe better. We kept a Mandarin for a later film and we saved money on the budget too because we didn't have to do that scene. We probably didn't piss off China at the time. So we had a lot of benefits from that decision.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember the biggest time I ever exerted mine was early in 2006. I think it was over Christmas holidays. I got unhappy with the Iron Man script. And the script at the time, Jeff Bridges, Obadiah Stain, who in the movie is the villain, was actually working for the Mandarin. And so there was a whole nother scene or two where we”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I haven't been doing press that Stan Lee or Kevin created Marvel Studios. And as we heard in the story, that's not the case, right? The baton came to me and that was my legacy, which I'm really proud of. I'm also really proud of identifying Kevin. And I remember the conversation with Ike, who had never met Kevin before in 2006. Ike's in New York and Kevin and I were in LA that you need to hire somebody when Avi left. I said, no, Kevin can do it. He can be my president in production and he's now, when I sold the company to Disney, I told the same thing to Eiger that Kevin could run it. And he's become, I'm as big as fan in how he's done the films the past 10 years and has become, you know, the most respected, great, a producer in Hollywood. And so part of managing creativity is knowing when to exert yours and when to get the best out from others.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About finance and to the bankers about the financing and to paramount about their break evens. And politically structure a studio in terms of personnel that I thought could do well. And then to manage creative people like John Favreau and Robert Downey and Kevin Feige, my president of production, who they all worked for me, right? I was chairman of the studio. But to get the best out of them, I learned this from my time at CA in Disney. It can't be because you're their boss. It's got to be because you give them the creative freedom to explore and be careful about guardrails, right? So a lot of people would say, oh, it was my idea. I was studio chairman to do Robert Dowdy rather than saying, yeah, I mean, John and Kevin recommended him, right? And I love that. I mean, that's why you hire good people. That's why I'm very proud of promoting Kevin Feige. A lot of people, I think, believe because”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Part of it, Tim, is I think most people, because I haven't done press, they view my role as very much the financial structuring, the distribution deal, the COCO role on Marvel, and less on the creative side. And I think what in retrospect and talking this through with you, the biggest creative thing I've ever done in my life was the first weekend and having the vision for the MCU, for having what became the universe. intuitively believing these characters could become a modern mythology for this world. And that's a delusional belief I had at the time in retrospect. Like I didn't realize the bar of this. And then I had to put on the hat that I had to do for each of the dominoes. So if I went into my board and I just creatively talked, they wouldn't have listened to me. So I had to argue in their language.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We hired a guy named Eric Roller. In that example And then I remember they got their three or four million back and we split the money. So we had no risk. It was like a mini Marvel Studios type of deal. And we made, I forget the order, we made a Doctor Strange one. We made Iron Man. We made Avengers. We made a Hulk one. And they all did pretty well. And so they're still fun to watch. And that was our chance to creatively be in charge of a project and show the board that we could do it.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. It is in 2004 while I was raising the money for the theatrical films. I wanted to prove to the board that we actually could produce something. And so I was able to make a deal with Lionsgate, Michael Burns, and John Feldheimer who still run Lionsgate that we'd make $3 million directed DVD animated movies. I think the budget was three to four million. And they put up the money. Marvel Studios.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It all came together. We had some disagreements at the end about reshoots, which cost some money. But I was able to get Ike and the board to approve the ones that we wanted to do. But marketing was a tough challenge too, to get paramount to manage marketing because all this stuff doesn't make any sense if nobody goes to see the movie. I think it was Katzenberg who told me to show up at every meeting and make sure we get a good release date in retrospect. We chose May 2nd because nobody else wanted it. Like it was an early date. People thought the summer started with Memorial Day. And so us going to May 2nd, now it's a great date. And Marvel has it every year. But we had it, it turned out to be really good because we had the first movie of the summer. And Paramount gave us that date. They keep their best dates for their own movies. So we were able to get a date they didn't want. It sounds weird to say things went smoothly from that point on, but for those two years.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We took the spruce goose hanger by the ocean where Howard Hughes had this huge wooden hanger that he built the biggest airplane in the world. And that's appropriately where we filmed it since Tony Stark is influenced by Howard Hughes. And that was a big decision because we didn't get tax incentives by being in California. But it turned out to be great because we were all so close and it became a set of people that were really enthusiastic. When Paul Tro joined, that was a big win. I think it was Brian Lord who called me and said Gwynneth was interested and my God to get an Academy Award-winning actress like her, you know, was a dream.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT