Marvel Studios Head Storyboard Artist/Animatics Supervisor Federico D'Alessandro released a five-minute pre-viz animatic that shows an early version of the pivotal scene in Iron Man 3 where Tony Stark's mansion is attacked by The Mandarin. Take a look at this video to see how this action sequence was mapped out, months before shooting even began, then read what Federico D'Alessandro had to say about creating this animatic.

"I met with Shane Black very early during pre-production to discuss this scene. Even in the early stages, the sequence seemed gargantuan. So much needed to happen in a relatively short amount of time, and I knew that this would be my most challenging animatic yet. The beauty of the way Shane works is that he's not only a brilliant storyteller but he's very open to other ideas, and during my time on the show he trusted me as a creative collaborator. I wanted to reward the freedom he gave me and that led to some of my best work I've done for Marvel yet. After a few story meetings with Shane where we hashed out a lot of beats together, he gave me control of the scene and I went to work figuring out how to turn this sequence into a visual spectacle.

Creating this animatic was a technically challenging process as I was trying a lot of new techniques not normally found in animatics. The storytelling had to be tight, the energy frenetic, and the action clear. One of the things I focused on was a "good news, bad news" stacking of the beats... Tony gets out of a bind, only to be faced with another challenge which he overcomes but then he is immediately dealt a fresh problem. As much as anything else, Tony needed to out-think his attackers.

Thankfully Shane and Marvel were ecstatic with the end result. By the time the animatic was approved by all the powers-that-be, were still many months away from shooting, but I think having this kind of scene locked down so early allowed Marvel to carefully strategize all the necessary elements to make this very complex scene come to life. In the end, they ended up following my animatic almost shot-to-shot, so seeing that on screen was an amazingly gratifying experience."

In related news, Iron Man 3 crossed the $300 million benchmark at the domestic box office yesterday, after just 14 days in release, and passed the $1 billion milestone internationally, after just 23 days in global theaters.

The sequel is just the second Marvel Studios movie to earn over $1 billion globally, with Marvel's The Avengers crossing that plateau after just 19 days in release. Iron Man 3 is just the sixth Disney movie to earn $1 billion worldwide, following Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Alice in Wonderland, Toy Story 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Marvel's The Avengers.