The Warner Bros. Decision That Almost Erased The Iron Giant (1999)

The studio then produced exactly one theatrical poster for the film.

What happened at Warner Bros. Animation

To understand the marketing failure of The Iron Giant, you need to understand what had happened to Warner Bros. Feature Animation in the eighteen months before the film was released. The division's previous major release, Quest for Camelot (1998), had been catastrophically received, earning approximately $22 million against an $80 million budget. The failure had triggered an exodus of executives from the animation division. By the time The Iron Giant was approaching release, the institutional home that had commissioned it had, by Brad Bird's account, essentially emptied out.

The remaining studio infrastructure lacked both the personnel and the organizational will to build a promotional campaign proportionate to the film's test results. The fast-food tie-in with Burger King that had been planned was dropped. The television advertising budget was minimal. The promotional energy that Warner Bros. concentrated in the summer of 1999 went elsewhere, specifically to Wild Wild West, which the studio expected to be its major event film of the season.

Bird's description of the situation is precise: they were making the film in a state of institutional abandonment, allowed to finish because it was cheaper than stopping. The corollary was that when the film was finished, there was no one left to tell anyone it existed.

The numbers that followed

The Iron Giant opened on August 6, 1999, to $5.4 million. The studio had needed approximately $8 million to consider the opening a success. The second weekend produced $3.4 million. The domestic run totaled $23.2 million. International added approximately $8.5 million.

The Rotten Tomatoes score was, and remains, above 96 percent.

The gap between those two facts — a critical reception that placed the film among the greatest animated works in the medium's history, and a theatrical run that earned less than half its production budget — is one of the starkest mismatches between institutional performance and artistic quality in contemporary film.

What the film did next

The Iron Giant arrived on VHS in January 2000 and immediately began building the audience that the studio had been unable to introduce it to in theaters. Cable television gave it repeated exposure. DVD gave the community physical ownership. The specific intensity of the response it generated in the viewers who found it — particularly the parents who watched it with their children and found themselves unexpectedly devastated by its climax — produced the kind of word-of-mouth that no marketing budget can buy and no marketing failure can entirely suppress.

Brad Bird made The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007) at Pixar and won two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature. The film that had opened to $5.4 million became, in retrospect, the debut of one of the most significant directorial careers in animation's history. The studio that had failed to market it watched from the sidelines.

FAQ: The Iron Giant (1999) Production and Marketing

Why did The Iron Giant fail at the box office?

The film's commercial failure was almost entirely caused by inadequate marketing. Warner Bros. Feature Animation had lost most of its executive team following the failure of Quest for Camelot (1998), and the remaining studio infrastructure could not mount a promotional campaign proportionate to the film's quality. The studio produced one theatrical poster and allocated minimal advertising budget.

How much did The Iron Giant cost to make?

The production budget was approximately $48-50 million. The film earned $23.2 million domestically and approximately $8.5 million internationally for a worldwide total of approximately $31.7 million.

What did critics say about The Iron Giant in 1999?

Critics were almost universally positive. The film holds a score above 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal called it an instant classic in his review. The commercial failure occurred despite, rather than because of, the critical response.

Is The Iron Giant based on a book?

Yes. The film is based on The Iron Man: A Children's Story in Five Nights by Ted Hughes, published in 1968 in the UK (published in the US as The Iron Giant to avoid confusion with Marvel's Iron Man). Brad Bird's adaptation significantly changed the story's setting, characters, and conclusion.

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