‘Iron Giant’:
Film, all but abandoned by studio, still winning fans by word of mouth
Film from 1999, all but abandoned by studio, wins fans by word of mouth.
Much like the fate of the lead character in “The Iron Giant,” the adults in charge of Warner Bros. at the time never gave the animated movie a chance.
The 1999 film was made in the wake of “Quest for Camelot,” a huge box office failure that soured the studio on its animation future, and helped lead to a purge of high-level executives. “The Iron Giant” was allowed to be finished only because it was too late to scuttle the $55 million project.
“We joked on the film that they forgot to turn off the electricity, so we made a movie,” says director Brad Bird. “That’s kind of what it felt like because every week when we made it, or every two weeks, another executive in the building would be gone. Pretty soon there were none left, and we were just making the film.”
The movie, an adventurous and moving 1950s Cold War-era story about a boy who meets a metal giant who doesn’t want to be used as a weapon, was a huge commercial failure. Released with almost no marketing campaign, it made less than $6 million in the U.S. during its opening weekend, and quickly disappeared from theaters.
But the devastated animators, story
artists and other filmmakers who worked on the movie would get their vindication. Slowly over the years, mostly by word of mouth, the film became a beloved classic. When Chronicle critics and movie editors recently gave readers a choice of movies to watch on a big screen at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland this Friday, Sept. 23, “The Iron Giant” was the runaway winner — beating out seven other box office hits, including “The Sting” and “Singin’ in the Rain.”
“The Iron Giant” had been in production for more than a year when “Quest for Camelot” came out. Modeled on the template of Disney musical hits including “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast,” “Quest for Camelot” was a calamitous bust.
“The Iron Giant” was the first feature for many who worked on it, including associate producer John Walker. His job, he says, was to “follow Brad around and persuade him to actually finish the thing.”
The result was an enormous amount of creative freedom to make the movie Bird wanted to make — an adult-friendly film that played like a live-action feature, a closer relative stylistically to more mature Japanese animation than recent Disney musical hits.
Mark Andrews, a storyboard artist who had worked on “Quest for Camelot” and hated the experience, said “The Iron Giant” shoot was grueling but wondrous.
“It was like getting to animation heaven,” says Andrews, in his mid-20s during the film’s production. “That totally outweighed the pressure. And that was a real-life lesson. If you’re working on crap, you could be given four years and you could hate yourself, versus you’re working on something that you’re passionate about and they’re making all the right moves. You don’t care if you’re working 60-hour weeks. It doesn’t matter.”
Bird was already a legend, working with Steven Spielberg on TV’s “Amazing Stories” and as a creative consultant during the first eight years of “The Simpsons.” He had been developing a project called “Ray Gunn” for Turner Feature Animation, when that group merged with Warner Bros.
“The Iron Giant” storyboard artist Kevin O’Brien, who worked with Bird on “The Simpsons,” calls the filmmaker “the greatest foot soldiers’ general in this business.”
“He’s Maximus in ‘Gladiator,’ ” Andrews adds. “He knows all your names, he knows what you go through. He makes you feel appreciated and he brings you to the table and he wants to hear your ideas. It was fantastic.”
The crew of “The Iron Giant” knew they had something special. But even with a stellar finished product, it became clear that Warner Bros. had no plans to promote the movie. There was no deal with a fastfood chain, no line of toys and just one movie poster. The single theatrical trailer gave away the surprise ending of the film. Warner Bros. seemingly spent every marketing dollar on the summer release “Wild Wild West,” one of the biggest bombs in movie history.
“They weren’t laying any groundwork for the film,” Bird says. “When we finally test screened (‘The Iron Giant’), it got … something like the highest test scores Warner Bros. had seen in 15 years. We knew that the best way to get people on the side of the film was to let them see it. The problem was when we opened, nobody knew what it was.”
It seems as if everyone who worked on the film has a wrenching story of being in a near-empty theater, watching a heartbreakingly small audience that loved the film. Bird says he was personally “crushed.”
“The Iron Giant” animation production specialist Andrew Jimenez watched the film in a theater 11 days in a row, observing the enthusiastic but quickly dwindling crowds. Walker says when he found an empty theater near Times Square, he started paying strangers to see the film.
“I stood outside the theater for the rest of the night,” Walker says. “When people would come by and see the poster, I’d say, ‘It’s a great movie. I’ll buy your tickets.’ I bought like 10 or 12 people’s tickets. There was nobody there.”
But even as they mourned, the “Iron Giant” crew saw signs of redemption to come. Other filmmakers, including Guillermo del Toro, John Landis and Pixar’s John Lasseter, championed the film. Lasseter and Steve Jobs wooed Bird to Pixar to make “The Incredibles,” allowing him to bring a chunk of his “Iron Giant” filmmaking team.
The thrill of creation and the disappointments surrounding the “Iron Giant” release fueled their future work. Jimenez and Andrews directed the Pixar short “One Man Band,” and Andrews was a director and screenwriter on “Brave,” winning a best animated feature Oscar. Walker stayed with Bird and produced “The Incredibles.” Peter Sohn, just 19 when he was hired as an animator on “The Iron Giant,” directed Pixar’s “The Good Dinosaur.”
“The feeling of how that crew was working together has been a dragon that I have chased forever since then,” Sohn says. “Nobody was complaining. There were so many philosophies that we learned about, that we continue to carry: ‘Why are you doing this? Is it for the money? Why are you doing this? Do you believe in the work?’ ”
Bird directed “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille” at Pixar before directing liveaction films “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” and “Tomorrowland.” He’s back at Pixar now, working on an “Incredibles” sequel.
Bird speaks fondly about his time on “The Iron Giant.” The pain is in the past, and he can bask in the movie’s success in the present. Bird says he’s thankful to Warner Bros. for giving him a wonderful opportunity. He cooperated with a 2015 “Iron Giant” special edition, which includes “The Giant’s Dream,” a moving Anthony Giacchino documentary that chronicles the movie’s struggles and eventual success.
“I’m totally grateful to anyone who sees it and likes it enough to recommend it to others,” Bird says. “The fact that it is word of mouth coming from movie lovers, rather than an ad campaign or toys or something else like that, touches me very much.” Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle pop culture critic. Email: phartlaub@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub