Rebecca Hall Confirms Her 'Iron Man 3' Character Was Reduced Because Of Merchandising Concerns

Someday, someone is going to write a tell-all book exploring the history of Marvel Studios, and it will almost certainly be a compelling read. The company's rise has been nothing short of astonishing, but the stories emerging from behind-the-scenes have often been bizarre and inexplicable, the result of battles over creative control between several different captains trying to steer the ship in different directions. Specifically, we're talking about the clashing between Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige.

A little over a year ago, Feige won this particular war, essentially cutting Perlmutter out of the decision-making process at Marvel Studios. However, the fragments of their years of strife are still apparent and still being talked about. Case in point: Rebecca Hall still isn't euphoric with what went down on Iron Man 3.

Iron Man is actually one of Marvel Studios' best movies, a hilarious, weird, and refreshingly different from its predecessors. It's a Shane Black movie through and through...although Black himself was brutally honest about the process of making the film while he was doing press rounds for The Nice Guys earlier this year:

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.

Although he doesn't name names, this is very much in line with the kind of decision-making associated with Perlmutter. The kind of decision-making that almost drove Kevin Feige to leave Marvel during the production of Captain America: Civil War. Then again, it's still not clear exactly whose name was on that memo.

Anyway, what is clear now is that Rebecca Hall's Maya Hansen was initially the chief villain of Iron Man 3 and that this huge plot point was nixed in the middle of production because she wouldn't move toys (ugh). Hall vented her frustrations with The Toronto Sun while promoting her new movie, Christine, at the Toronto International Film Festival:

I signed on to do something that was a substantial role. She wasn't entirely the villain – there have been several phases of this – but I signed on to do something very different to what I ended up doing. Halfway through shooting they were basically like, 'What would you think if you just got shot out of nowhere?' I was meant to be in the movie until the end... I grappled with them for awhile and then I said, 'Well, you have to give me a decent death scene and you have to give me one more scene with Iron Man,' which Robert Downey Jr. supported me on.

However, Marvel Studios does seem to turn things around, and even Hall applauds the company for casting Brie Larson as the star of their first solo female superhero movie:

Look, [Marvel] is paying for their mistakes right now. and I applaud them for casting Brie Larson in Captain Marvel. Hallelujah. It's about time women started being the heroes of things. They can also be the anti-heroes of the things and that's what I feel I'm getting to do with Christine.

Hall has been receiving rave reviews for her work in Christine, which opens on October 14, 2016. And Marvel will attempt to atone for past sins with Captain Marvel, which is set for a March 8, 2019, release date.