Movie Marketing Veteran Gerry Rich on Opening ‘Iron Man,’ Grappling With AI and Maintaining the Human Touch

Click here to read the full article.

On today’s episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast, movie marketing veteran Gerry Rich details his new memoir “Chasing Hollywood: A Marketing Chief’s Lessons on Breaking Through.”

Rich has worked for most of

Hollywood’s major studios, including Paramount, Columbia Pictures, MGM, Miramax and Amazon MGM Studios. He looks back at moments of triumph such as the 2008 opening of “Iron Man,” which launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And Rich looks ahead to how the discipline of entertainment marketing and audience targeting is changing in the age of AI.

“Going back even a decade or two we had the ability to reach a broad audience all at one time. Through linear television and cable and sports and digital and social media, we were able to hit a broad swath of the audience in real time,” Rich says. “It’s much more difficult to do that now, particularly with linear TV. The only thing that really gets a significant audience is would be live sports, particularly football. That’s where we’re assured of getting a captive audience, a broad audience, a significant audience all at once. All of that has changed quite a bit.”

Rich recalls the heady experience of building buzz for the “Iron Man” release in 2008, when the industry was skeptical about the market for elevated superhero movie. And star Robert Downey Jr. had a lot to prove after public battles with personal demons that inevitably hurt his star power.

“ Iron Man didn’t have the notoriety as IP as Spider-Man or X-Men or any of the better known characters. So there was some uncertainty as to whether or not Iron Man would be able to resonate for the broadest audience and deliver superhero-type grosses. There was also a lot of skepticism about whether Robert Downey Jr. was the right guy to play this character, this flawed character. And there was a lot of questions as to whether or not [director] Jon Favreau could deliver a movie with the adequate and necessary scope and scale,” Rich recalls.

“But we really felt and as soon as we saw dailies that there was something really extraordinary happening with that movie. And what we decided to do was hold off showing any assets from the film until Comic-Con of 2007, well before the release of the movie,” he says. “And that’s when we brought the entire crew down [to Comic-Con]. Jon Favreau came out to a thunderous applause. And he had his iPhone, capturing the response of the audience and he just had the group from the very beginning. We showed the teaser trailer that we were going to launch, as well as some film footage, and the audience was sold. They came out as major champions of the film.”