VIDEO: Marvel Looks To Iron Man To Do Some Heavy Lifting

Iron Man (VIA) jumps from Marvel’s (MVL) color coated comic book pages to the big screen on May 2 and stockholders are hoping for a box office performance more akin to Spiderman (SNE), the highest grossing film ($821 million) in 2002, than Elektra’s (NWS) paltry $56 million.
 
Robert Downey Jr. plays Peter Stark, the genius billionaire inventor who becomes Iron Man to defend the world. But fighting evil requires organization and strategy, and for that Stark relies on his assistant, Virginia “Pepper” Potts, played by Gwyneth Paltrow.
 
Saving the world won’t mean much to Marvel if the film doesn’t earn some serious dough. After experiencing growth from three Spiderman movies and three X-Men movies, according to TheStreet.com’s experts, Marvel needs another franchise to keep the stock from stumbling.