Hollywood Flashback: 25 Years Before ‘Wild Robot,’ ‘The Iron Giant’ Stalked the Earth

Twenty-five years before the release of DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot , The Iron Giant charged into theaters.

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Brad Bird, who worked on The Simpsons and later helmed Ratatouille and The Incredibles , made his feature directorial debut with the 1950s-set movie boasting a voice cast that included Vin Diesel, Jennifer Aniston and Harry Connick Jr.; it centered on a boy befriending an alien robot (Diesel) that the U.S. government sought to destroy.

Bird and Tim McCanlies’ script was based on Ted Hughes’ 1968 novel, originally published as The Iron Man . Hughes, who was married to novelist and poet Sylvia Plath until her death by suicide in 1963, wrote it as a bedtime story for their kids to help them grieve.

The Who’s Pete Townshend adapted Hughes’ book as his 1989 concept album The Iron Man: A Musical and was helping to develop a feature musical adaptation. Once the movie landed at Warner Bros. Animation with Bird attached, it was no longer envisioned as a musical, though Townshend stayed on as executive producer. “I just pitched them the idea of, ‘What if a gun had a soul?’” Bird said in an interview.

Voicing the robot’s young friend Hogarth was Eli Marienthal, who nabbed the gig at age 11 and remembers Bird’s inventive methods of getting him into character, such as having him stand in a bucket of cold water for a lake scene.

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Warners released The Iron Giant on Aug. 6, 1999, and while it was embraced by critics, it fizzled at the box office, earning $23 million ($44 million today). During an interview for the movie’s 10th anniversary, Bird recalled the studio’s hesitation in selecting a release date, which the director felt “made it impossible to get awareness for the film going in time, and we were dead on arrival on opening day.”

But Iron Giant is cherished by fans, and in 2015, a remastered version of it was unveiled at the Toronto Film Festival. That’s also where The Wild Robot premieres Sept. 8. Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal and Kit Connor voice director Chris Sanders’ film about a robot from outer space that is forced to bond with animals on an otherwise uninhabited island.

As for The Iron Giant, Marienthal — who no longer works in Hollywood and co-founded Back to Earth , an organization focused on providing boys with wilderness experiences — tells THR about the film , “It’s been a delight to watch it touch so many people at different moments.”

This story first appeared in the Sept. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe .

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