Due to the enormous success of Disney Jr.'s preschool series, Spidey and His Amazing Friends, a spin-off, Iron Man and His Awesome Friends, will be premiering in August. The newest addition to the Marvel franchise, the show follows a young group called the Iron Friends, led by Tony Stark (Iron Man), with help from Riri Williams (Ironheart), and Amadeus Cho (Iron Hulk), and similar to the narrative of Spidey, the friends tackle problem-solving, working together, and finding the best outcome for everyone, with the exception of their robotic rival Ulton.
After screening the first two episodes of Iron Man and His Awesome Friends, I can immediately tell that preschoolers will adore the series. Its rich and colorful graphics, characters, and pulsating, but fun music will pull them in, but they'll also learn lessons in teamwork and friendship.
Ahead of the August 11 premiere on Disney Jr. and its launch on Disney+ on August 12, The Parent Watch had the privilege of speaking with the executive producers of Iron Man and His Awesome Friends, Sean Coyle and James Eason-Garcia. They previously worked on other Disney Jr. successes and have now joined forces for the superhero series.
Speaking with executive producers Sean Coyle and James Eason-Garcia on all the power of Iron Man and His Awesome Friends
More and more, the Marvel Universe is becoming more popular with its growing fan base-adults and children alike. While entertaining and thrilling, some of the films might not be suitable for a younger audience, due to their violence and intensity. To ensure that the franchise could be appreciated by all age groups, Disney rolled out a few TV series with some of the famous characters for the kids.
However, Iron Man and His Awesome Friends will be something that everyone will enjoy, no matter their age group. Despite being a children's show, it's filled with action, humor, and adventure.
The Parent Watch: Thank you for taking the time to schedule this interview. We love Marvel here at The Parent Watch, so it's always exciting to see new projects added to the franchise. And Iron Man and His Awesome Friends is the latest one.
PW: What made you decide to create a preschool series based on the Iron Man characters and their world, following the success of Spidey and His Amazing Friends?
Coyle: [With] the success of Spidey, which is an awesome program, a wonderful partnership that they built up between Disney Junior and Marvel. That and the decision was made to expand the Marvel Universe and expand some of these characters. To do it with Iron Man just seemed like a no-brainer, especially with what happens with the MCU movies. That was a huge influence. I mean, Iron Man has just become like a mega star in pop culture. And just like everybody knows who Iron Man is. Yeah, but there's also this group of young fans and little, little kids that maybe they don't know who Iron Man is.
To be tasked with introducing this brand new audience of human beings, like guiding them into the Marvel experience and introducing them to Tony Stark, Riri Williams, Amadeus Cho, Iron Pup, Vision, and all this amazing cast of characters that we have. It was just really fun and unique, and honestly, the whole experience has just felt like an honor. It's like we get to introduce kids to this character that everybody loves. And hopefully, you know, these kids will watch our show and they'll love it. And then maybe like 20 years from now, they'll see their first MCU movie or whatever, and they'll be like, hey, Iron Man, that's just like that cartoon I watched when I was three years old. That's pretty cool.
PW: With preschoolers and young audiences loving Spidey and His Amazing Friends, do you expect the same reaction to Iron Man?
Coyle and Garcia: Well, I know we're the biggest fans, so we hope we hope everybody likes it as much as we do. When we do these creative spaces, you really just always want to put your best foot forward. And we have such great collaborators with Marvel and Disney Junior and our team at Atomic Cartoons, and everybody is just working so tirelessly and so hard. It's so creative and we're surrounded by so much talent and brilliance on all sides. And so when all that comes together, you, we've created something that we think is totally awesome. The name, it's in the name. Right. And now it's up. It's going out to the world and we hope everybody else finds it as totally awesome as we do.
It's interesting, a little peek behind the curtain, right? Like what we get to do, which we're very grateful for and we're super blessed to be doing the kind of work that we're doing. But it's also a gamble sometimes, you know, like what James is talking about. We really invest ourselves in this property and in the relationships with our characters, but also with the people who are helping us create these characters and bring this world to life. We are surrounded by just the most amazing, amazingly talented cast of animators and directors and board artists and sound effects people and musical composers, and voice actors.
The whole thing. We're just so blessed to be surrounded by all these awesome people, and we've all bought into this, into what we're doing. And we all believe in this show so much, and we put so much effort into this, and our wonderful relationship with the partners at Marvel and Disney Junior. But the reality is like, we love it so much, but the one thing that we can't control is what an audience is going to think about it, you know? So it's just that's sort of the nature of what we do, where it's like you, you pump all of your energy and all of your love and all of your blood and sweat and tears into this thing to make it what it is.
And then you're reminded, 'What if they don't like it? Or what if it doesn't do well?' I think you can't let that part of it guide or dictate what you do. Like, you have to approach it with passion, and you have to approach it with love. And you have to approach it with, like James is saying, your best foot forward and wanting to do the best version of the idea that you've been tasked to bring [Iron Man] to life.
I'd say one other thing to that is, you know, both Sean and I are kind of just big kids, and this is the stuff we love. I would be watching the show whether I was making it or not. Right. And so we want to put everything we put out on the screen, everything we work with everybody to do. It's something I would have loved as a kid. I know it's something Sean would have loved to watch as a kid. And that's, that's kind of been our North Star the whole time, is like, let's put something on the screen. That five-year-old me would have loved, that three-year-old Sean would have loved, and that kids today will also love.
We always [aimed] the goal for preschool audiences. That is our main goal: to make them happy and excited. But if we make their older siblings or teenagers, their teenage brothers and sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, or grandparents [happy about watching Iron Man], [and] If everybody gets excited about it, then it's just that much better.
PW: The storylines are phenomenal and both adults and kids can enjoy them. Was the writing process challenging to meet the goal?
Coyle and Garcia: It was always the goal, working in preschool, to make this relatable and easy to access for our audience. How is there something that they'll understand? But then, for our show, because it is Iron Man, how could we take that up a notch and add that Iron Man level, add that exciting science fiction, the armor, the fun, the adventure? So that's always kind of where we start. And then from there, it's what makes us laugh, what makes us, what brings us joy, what makes us feel wish fulfillment. And that wasn't just Sean and I in the writers' room. It was across the board with our designers, with our board artists, with our directing team. We have an amazing partner in our supervising director, Mike Dowding, who really just like us [and] we kind of laughed.
I don't call us the Three Musketeers, but we are kind of like the three iron friends. We each kind of bring a different element, and we've all kind of been in lockstep from the beginning about that. And at every stage, we're just, is this making us laugh? Are we having fun? Because, again, the peek behind the curtain, we don't watch these episodes once we read them, you know, dozens and dozens of times in script, and then watch them dozens of times as an animatic and animation. And we just want to keep being entertained ourselves. We want to keep laughing every time we watch these episodes. And, you know, we just mixed an episode the other day, and there are jokes and moments that I've seen probably a hundred times. Right? And you still laugh and you still giggle and you still get like, ooh, I can't wait for people to see this moment.
PW: It's kind of like The Simpsons there with the jokes.
Garcia: If we're the preschool Simpsons, I won't be mad about it.
PW: As Spidey is a smash hit, and in the same Marvel Universe as Iron Man, could there be a possibility for a crossover?
Coyle and Garcia: I think that we've built these worlds like the Spidey [and His Amazing Friends] team, respectively, like they've built their world, and we have sort of, like, taken what's worked from that show as our initial blueprint. And we've built up our own unique world, where, like, the two shows definitely have different flavors, but it's almost like they're both chocolate ice cream.
[iron Man and His Awesome Friends and Spidey and His Amazing Friends] exist in this same enough continuity where like, sure, if we ever wanted to tell a story where like, our characters went into their world or their characters came into our world, like we have the freedom to do that which is fun to think about.
PW: The theme song, "Totally Awesome," is performed by Mark Hoppus of Blink-182, and is one of the music industry's superstars. Why did you decide on recruiting him, and how did he feel about being a part of the Marvel franchise?
Coyle and Garcia: All the credit in the world [goes] to Jay Stutler and the Disney Junior Music Group for bringing the idea of Mark Hoppus to the forefront. Originally, when they walked in and they were like, you guys like Blink-182. We were like, wait a second, where are you going with this? What are you talking about? Mark was interested in doing this [for Iron Man] and then that just sort of like fell into place, and it all happened so naturally.
And we joke all the time James and I were like, you know, sometimes we forget what it is that we do for a living because we have these really beautiful and just dream-like moments where we are literally in the same room and having a conversation with people that we idolized, whether as, like kids or as teenagers or as young adults or whatever. And then, you know, it's kind of it's like a "pinch me" moment, right where it's kind of like, 'what? What do I have to offer? Like, I'm who? Look who I'm talking to. Like, who cares what I think? Like, this is, you know, this is the genius in the room.
We're in a room right now. We're in a room right now talking to Mark Hoppus about Iron Man. Like what? Who gets to have that opportunity?
You explain to him what the show is and what we hope that audiences will get from the show. And he's like, you know, that sounds awesome. And how about this? And he adds his own extra, you know, unique, unique spin on it and his point of view. And it really just feeds into the beautiful collaboration that we've we've set forth since day one. We have something very important to both James and myself, where everybody around us is treated like a filmmaker and a storyteller. We accept ideas from any and all places because we want the points of view. We want different points of view. You never know where magic is going to happen, and where it's going to come from. You write a script, and what you see on screen is the exact same thing. That's not healthy, you know? Like you, an idea needs to go through an array, a wide arrangement of like calculated creative evolution, like several different spinning plates and several different people dipping in and out of the idea at different phases of the journey. Then it just becomes this beautiful thing where it's like you're just you're constantly passing your idea to the next person, and they add their own magic to it, and they pass it to the next person. They add their own magic to it. And then when it's on screen, you're just kind of like, Holy gosh, guys like that are way better than I ever could have imagined. And it's because of everybody involved.
I will say, Sean and I kind of, you know, provided some themes and some ideas to Mark when he was diving into it, but I know I could have never I'm not going to speak for you, Sean, but I know I could have never come up with a line as good as it's better than chocolate, it's better than [chocolate and the weekends].
He comes out of the gate with a line that brilliant and that fun and that you just get it. You just [think] Tony, Riri, and Armafriendship is better than chocolate. Better than weekends. It's such a Mark Hoppus thing. It's such a Blink-182 thing. And it perfectly encapsulates [Iron Man] and the joy we're trying to tell here. And he just nailed it.
Before wrapping up our interview, I asked Coyle and Garcia their final thoughts on Iron Man and His Awesome Friends.
Coyle and Garcia: We just hope people have a totally awesome, mega, ridiculously fun time with this show. Let it blow your hair back. Let it give you ideas on how you can make your world a much better place and just have a great, great time. Enjoy the ride. Enjoy the characters, enjoy the world. It's all so much fun, and hopefully it inspires a generation of kids to use their imaginations, and they all want to go out and make their days as awesome as the days for the kids and the Iron Friends.
Iron Man and His Awesome Friends will debut on Disney Jr. on August 11, and to get you prepared for the new show, heck out the trailer and synopsis below!
"Marvelās Iron Man and his Awesome Friends follows the adventures (and misadventures) of best friends and super geniuses ā Tony Stark (Iron Man), Riri Williams (Iron Heart), and Amadeus Cho (Iron Hulk) ā as they work together to solve problems, both big and small, and protect their city. In order to help them save the day, the Iron Friends each have their own Iron Suits that allow them to fly and give them enhanced super-strength."
This interview has been edited for clarity.
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