Comic-Com, the annual convention held in San Diego last week is a comic book fans heaven, but can be hell for many producers trying to sell their films to the vary people they hope will buy tickets next year.

One film that was able to create tremendous buzz was Paramount Pictures' Iron Man, directed by Jon Favreau.  For his part, Favreau understood the importance of winning over the Comic-Con community.

"With this title, Iron Man, most people out there in the world, when you say 'Iron Man,' they think it's a Black Sabbath song," explained Favreau.  "This is the only place where you could come, and everybody - all 6,500 people in there - know who the guy is, what he stands for, what the movie better do or not do, and what the pitfalls are from having seen other books adapted in ways that they didn't think was respectable or geared towards them."

It's always a gamble putting something out for criticism, especially when it's almost a year away from being released.  "I was like, 'Let's just show them what we've got,' and, fortunately, because of the Stan Winston suits that were built, we had a lot of practical, in-camera footage filmed, and [Industrial Light & Magic] scrambled to get those last five shots together so that we could show him flying and the high-tech version of the suit, too," said Favreau.  "We liked it, it played well, and we said, 'Let's see if this dog hunts.' And we put it out there, and it worked out well."

Favreau believes the gamble paid off with the footage they screened for fans.  "Ultimately you have to show them something that was worth waiting in line for and traveling all the way to Comic-Con and wearing a vinyl suit and putting on face paint," he explained.  "You know what I mean?...It's not an effortless endeavor to make it into Hall H at Comic-Con...And they're putting up with a lot.  They're waiting in a lot of lines, and...there's a lot of people there who are expecting more than they're going to see, so it was nice to give them more than they expected."