Ron’s Gone Wrong: How Marvel and Star Wars References Were Added

Ron’s Gone Wrong is now playing in theaters, and the new animated feature was made by 20th Century Studios and Locksmith Animation, which means it has since been released by Disney thanks to their merger with Fox. Ron’s Gone Wrong follows a world where android friends have replaced phones as the go-to device. The B*Bots in the movie have the option of Marvel and Star Wars skins, which ended up working out nicely for the creators when the merger happened. In fact, ComicBook.com recently had a chat with the movie’s writers, and they spoke about its references to the Disney properties.

“It was actually, it was a kind of brilliant kind of accident of the movie ending up with Disney because originally the movie was at Fox,” Sarah Smith shared. “I have to tell you when we were pitching the movie, we had all different versions of what we would show. ‘Look at what a B-bot can do,’ and we would use the skins of whatever studio we were pitching to, so different characters that it could be.” Peter Baynham added, “And then they had to go.”

Smith continued, “But we always had this joke, this Darth Vader bot who would say, ‘Let us cross to the dark side,’ which for some reason we were so keen to hang on to our Darth Vader joke. So when Disney then acquired Fox, we were like, ‘Let’s go ask them,’ and they were great. They gave us the right to use lots of those characters.”

Smith co-directed Ron’s Gone Wrong with Octavio E. Rodriguez, and Jean-Philippe Vine, who also recently spoke with ComicBook.com. During the chat, the two directors shared which Marvel skins they would choose for their own personal android pal.

“Ooh, I’m a big fan of the Iron Man skin, I just think it’s the coolest and… Oh yeah. Little subliminal programming going on in the background. But you know, we have it hovering, you know, in a jet outside the school and our movie and I’m like, I wanna be that kid. Let’s call it the Iron Man skin,” Vine shared. Rodriguez replied, “Yeah, for me it was Black Panther, which was amazing. And that we had that as well. So it would be great.”

Ron’s Gone Wrong features an all-star voice cast that includes Zach Galifianakis (A Wrinkle in Time, The Hangover), Jack Dylan Grazer (Shazam!, Luca), Olivia Colman (The Crown), Ed Helms (The Office), Justice Smith (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), Rob Delaney (Deadpool 2), Kylie Cantrall (Gabby Duran and the Unsittables), Ricardo Hurtado (The Goldbergs), Marcus Scribner (Black-ish), and Thomas Barbusca (Chad).

Ron’s Gone Wrong is now playing in theaters.