wrestling / News

Tony Khan on Comparisons Between Marvel and AEW’s Approaches, His Favorite MCU Film

November 25, 2020 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Tony Khan AEW Image Credit: AEW

Tony Khan sees a similarity in how AEW and Marvel approach their business model, as he noted in a new interview. Khan spoke with 411 alumnus Shawn Lealos for CBR, who asked him about how Marvel’s updating of its stories for a new generation in the MCU is similar to AEW. You can check out highlights below:

On the success of the MCU: “Marvel’s been around for years. I should say reemerge because Marvel’s brand, and their comics, obviously, but the films and TV shows have become some of the most powerful, some of the most valuable content, and much more valuable and much more interest around these properties than there was 15 years ago.”

On his love of Iron Man: “[Iron Man is] still my favorite Marvel movie. I just think that’s a great movie. I don’t think it’s just a great comic book movie. It’s a great movie about ingenuity. That’s definitely my father’s favorite of the Marvel movies. My dad and I saw that, and my dad’s the smartest person I’ve ever known. And he really liked that movie. And so I know that there was something to it. If that makes sense. It wasn’t just fluff.”

On how AEW’s approach is similar to Marvel’s: “One of the great things [Marvel does] is they really care about what their audience wants, and they go out of their way to hear their fans. And I think that’s what I try to do with AEW and we all have made our mission with AEW is to give a wrestling show that was giving the fans what they were missing in wrestling. I think we’ve carved out a great space for ourselves, similar to Marvel. Obviously, I’d love to have the kind of mainstream success they’ve had. But within the world of wrestling, we’ve been extremely successful,” he continued. “And in the mainstream, we are very successful. I mean, we’ve got a top TV show. Since the news has dominated really the last eight-plus months, we’ve always consistently been in the top five non-news shows, often number one or number two, and that is great mainstream success. I’d like to get even bigger, and Marvel is a great company to try and aspire to be like them.” Khan ended by saying, “I would absolutely take that comparison all day.”