Pearce has already spoken about working on the now canceled (but still being discussed as a possible future project) Runaways movie for Marvel, but in an in-depth interview with io9 he elaborates on how that movie being canned ultimately led to him thinking about how much he loved the first Iron Man movie, and completely out of the blue began to write down some ideas which eventually became a 30-page document. Here is what he had to say on the matter in full:
"I’d made my superhero TV show No Heroics, and that led to writing Runaways for Marvel — but in September 2010, that project started to lose momentum, due to the imminent gigantic world-building of Avengers. And at the same time, I had my first kid. I was up at 4am every morning, feeding the baby and going out of my mind with lack of sleep. I started to watch DVDs – including the first Iron Man, which I consider the gold standard of modern superhero movies, and Iron Man 2, which I do not. And basically, I started thinking of what I’d do with a third movie. And writing it down. And at some point, after four weeks, I had a 30-page document. I have no idea how. That pitch has subsequently become known at Marvel as “the Jerry Maguire document”.
I sent it to my Runaways producer, and she reacted by a) telling me I’d gone mad and b) saying that legally, she probably couldn't even accept it. I convinced her to read it, though, and she reluctantly passed it up the chain to Stephen Broussard, the IM3 producer, and Kevin Feige himself. And…
Their reaction was a deafening silence. In fact, in Stephen’s case, when I met him in a corridor later that year, there was a look of genuine fear in his eyes that suggested he thought I was a psychopath. Quite understandably. So I forgot about the document, and got on with my life."
But of course, that wasn't the end of it -- Kevin Feige called and asked for a meeting 3 months later, and the rest is history. Be sure to click on the link below to check out the full interview, in which Pearce discusses many other aspects of the film, including that ever controversial Mandarin twist.
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