MCU: 10 Fascinating Facts Behind Iron Man 3 (2013)
1. The Villain Was Supposed To Be Female
Back in the 1990s, toy companies (and McDonalds) killed Tim Burton's Batman Forever over concerns that his darker approach to the material limited the selling appeal to kids. After all, Batman Returns had been a McDonalds Happy Meals tie-in movie and then it wasn't remotely a family movie. They didn't want that to happen again, so they leaned on Warner Bros and their approach to Forever changed.
The same sort of thing happened with Iron Man 3, according to Shane Black as his original intention for the story was over-ruled. He wanted the Aldrich Killian villain twist to actually be Rebecca hall's Maya Hansen but his hand was forced because someone at Marvel didn't believe she'd sell toys:
“All I’ll say is this, on the record: There was an early draft of Iron Man 3 where we had an inkling of a problem. Which is that we had a female character who was the villain in the draft. We had finished the script and we were given a no-holds-barred memo saying that cannot stand and we’ve changed our minds because, after consulting, we’ve decided that toy won’t sell as well if it’s a female."
“So, we had to change the entire script because of toy making. Now, that’s not [Marvel Studios president Kevin] Feige. That’s Marvel corporate. New York called and said, ‘That’s money out of our bank.’ In the earlier draft, the woman was essentially Killian – and they didn’t want a female Killian, they wanted a male Killian. I liked the idea, like Remington Steele, you think it’s the man but at the end, the woman has been running the whole show. They just said, “no way.”
Because, famously, Aldrich Killian sold LOADS of toys, didn't he? Every kid has a Killian doll. Idiots.