Unfilmed ‘Iron Man 3′ Scene Puts Pepper Potts in Charge

Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) goes through a lot in "Iron Man 3." She tries on the Iron Man suit (a bit of fan service that alludes to "Rescue,' her superhero alter ego in the comics), gets injected with the deadly (and sometimes explosive) Extremis serum and spends most of the third act in a sports bra (the only logical follow-up to the jean shorts Joss Whedon put her in in "Marvel's The Avengers"). But one of her most shining moments in Tony Stark's third stand-alone adventure didn't even make it past the script stage.

Now you can see — or, rather, read about — Pepper Potts working her savvy leadership skills in our exclusive deleted scene from the film. Presented in screenplay format, "What Pepper Did Last Month" shows just how top-notch a CEO she can be as she creates "Stark Solutions," a sort of Doctors Without Borders arm of Stark Industries.

Their first mission? Replacing all of the soda cans in the many Okle Cola dispensers throughout Africa with Stark Solutions anti-retrovirals to help battle malaria and other diseases.

It's a great scene, one that we wish had been filmed so it could at least be included as a deleted scene with next week's Blu-ray and DVD release of the film. Drew Pearce, who co-wrote "Iron Man 3" with director Shane Black, says the feeling is mutual.

"Well, there's lots of things going on in this scene and I know both Shane [Black] and I still really wish we had shot it so then we could've pushed to have it in the movie," Pearcetold Yahoo Movies in a phone interview. "It was so important for us to establish the idea that Pepper is in her own right a brilliant and dynamic CEO of Stark Industries. And there's some great material in Matt Fraction's comic book run about what she does as CEO and how she changes the company from essentially a weapons manufacturer to an ethical user of Tony's brain power."

Pearce also revealed that his love of Quentin Tarantino had a lot to do with the scene's origins.

"I'm a huge Tarantino fan and I love the scene in 'Inglourious Basterds' where to introduce Hugo Stiglitz [played by Til Schweiger] he drops into Sam Jackson's voice to narrate the mini-trailer for the exploitation movie that is Hugo's life," said Pearce. "It's a brilliant, dynamic, audacious way to step out of something and introduce a character. So we wanted a bit of that swing, really, and we felt that what's rare is for a female character to be given the kind of kick-ass intro that's more often attributed to superheroes themselves."

That swing is what helped bring Gwyneth Paltrow back for "Iron Man 3," as her participation in the film was dependent on her really loving the script. Luckily, she did ... and so did her husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.

"As far as I'm aware, Gwyneth wasn't signed to make 'Iron Man 3' and so what we had to do with the first script she had to read was actually something that she liked so much that she would, you know, agree to do it," said Pearce. "And we were told that Chris Martin had read it as well and Chris told her that she should do the movie because it was a really good script. So I think on some level we have Coldplay to thank for the fact that we have such a strong Pepper Potts in this movie."

"Iron Man 3" will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, September 24.