Many would not recognize the name – Brad Bird. For casual moviegoers, he is a nobody. But for avid fans, the guy is the freaking picasso of animated films. Bird is very picky and choosy about the movies he makes. An acclaimed writer and director, some of Bird’s best known works are The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and of course – 1999’s The Iron Giant. The Iron Giant was one of the greatest cult-classics of the 20th Century and remains underrated to this day. Given Bird did make a sequel to another masterpiece of his – The Incredibles, will we ever see an Iron Giant 2 movie? Will Iron Giant 2 ever hit the screens?
The Iron Giant 2 – How The Original Movie Began As A Musical
The movie is based on a children’s book of the same name. Written by Ted Hughes, The Iron Man: A Children’s Story In Five Nights was later changed to The Iron Giant so that people don’t confuse it for Marvel’s Iron Man. Pete Townsend turned the novel into an album – The Iron Man: A Musical. Several musicians joined forces to make a musical movie based on the novel. That is when Brad Bird was roped in. He quickly dispatched the musical elements out of the film and rewrote the script as an animated feature. The rest is history.
The Iron Giant is hailed as a milestone in the animated feature genre. Everything from the voice work (Jennifer Aniston and Vin Diesel played key roles) to the characterization and animation is seen as top notch even today. Despite underperforming at the Box Office, people still watch the heck out of this movie even after two decades. That loyal fan-following merits an iron Giant 2 sequel movie.
1991’s The Iron Giant Bombed Because WB Studios Didn’t Market It Properly
Brad Bird openly claims that the reason this movie failed despite it being so good was because of the studio. Fresh off the failure of Quest For Camelot, WB did not have that much faith in animated movies back in the ’90s and early 2000s. So they half expected The Iron Giant to fail as well. No significant promotion or marketing was done that would increase the movie’s break-even point. And the result was – no one knew a movie like The Iron Giant was even coming to the theaters.
When the test scores for the Brad Bird film came, it blew the WB execs’ minds. They knew they had screwed up by assuming wrongly. It was too late for the promotional campaigns and WB had another high value project they wanted to focus on. Will Smith’s Wild Wild West was just around the corner.
Well we all know how that turned out. Talk about priorities, jeez Warner Brothers!!!!
Bard Bird Believes There’s No Need For An Iron Giant Sequel
The writer-filmmaker is never keen on jumping on the sequel bandwagon. he likes treading new grounds and doing something that hasn’t been done before. The only movie he agreed to make a sequel for is The Incredibles. His other classic films like Ratatouille and Iron Giant will forever remain standalone projects.
There are other reasons he probably does not want to bring to light. But we can easily figure out those. Bird had issues working with Warner Brothers then, who screwed up the success ratio of a perfectly good movie like The Iron Giant. The financial failure of the original film is also a factor here. The Iron Giant 2 will probably never be made. And it is better it remains that way. All cult-classics should be unique. Not everything deserves a sequel.
Like it says in the film – “Souls don’t die”.
