The film stars RZA, Russell Crowe, Cung Le, Lucy Liu, Byron Mann, Rick Yune, Dave Bautista, and Jamie Chung.

Set in 19th century China, the story follows a series of lone warriors who are forced to unite to defeat a common foe and save their home of Jungle Village.

They use the chaos ensuing from a fight with the Hyena Clan to allow their co-conspirator Poison Dagger—the governor's aide—to assassinate Gold, after which Silver becomes the Lions' leader.

After arriving in the village, Zen-Yi and his men are confronted by Brass and find that they cannot physically harm him because his skin turns to metal on impact.

Zen-Yi's last surviving man sacrifices himself to pull a canopy support beam loose, burying Brass under heavy stone.

While the blacksmith recovers, he tells Jack of his past as an emancipated American slave who accidentally killed a white man who refused to let him go.

He fled America by boat and went to China, where monks trained him to use his body's energy to perform superhuman feats.

They took the project to Strike Entertainment, which considered that it needed more development and assigned several writers to rewrite the script, which began to depart from RZA's initial idea.

[24][29] Citing the specificity of the fictional universe in the Star Wars series, Roth said that the pair tried to fully define the aspects of The Man with the Iron Fists to make it interesting without fight scenes.

[28] The original script focused on several animal-themed clans fighting over territory, in particular Jungle Village, which acted as a center for shipments.

[29] RZA then financed and directed a short martial arts film called Wu-Tang vs. the Golden Phoenix featuring Hong Kong-based, kung-fu-trained actors.

When he and Roth pitched The Man with the Iron Fists to producers, RZA used the short film to prove that he could handle the martial arts action and be trusted to take on his first directing role.

On May 7, 2010, Universal Pictures announced it had agreed to finance and distribute the film, which Roth and Strike Entertainment's Marc Abraham and Eric Newman would produce.

[27] Filming began in China in December 2010 in locations including the city of Shanghai and Hengdian World Studios, and continued until March 2011.

[11] Approximately 6 weeks into filming, RZA began pushing the crew to work faster to remain on schedule.

It was edited to 96 minutes to meet the studio's requirements and to excise graphic content that would cause it to receive a restrictive rating, limiting its audience.

An effect in which Yune's character kills six opponents whose airborne blood spray spells out "revenge" in Chinese, was specifically written to use CGI.

[36] RZA launched an 11-date music concert called "The Iron Fists Tour" to promote the film in association with Rock the Bells and Guerilla Union.

[38][39] 16 heavily stylized posters, each by a different artist, were placed in outdoor locations in several North American cities and were designed to allow pedestrians to remove and keep them.

RZA promoted the film at the Hispanic-owned Martial Arts History Museum in Burbank, California and an original Spanish-dub viral video was also released.

An online awareness campaign included partnerships with Machinima Inc., hip-hop news site Global Grind, Ultimate Fighting Championship, IGN and Spotify.

[42] The film features music from The Black Keys, Kanye West, Wiz Khalifa, My Chemical Romance, John Frusciante and Chinese singer Sally Yeh.

[13] They then developed the film's soundtrack,[35] which was scheduled for release on October 23, 2012, and features 15 songs from the film including original songs by Kanye West, the Wu-Tang Clan, Talib Kweli, Ghostface Killah, Pusha T, Raekwon, and collaborations by RZA with The Black Keys and Flatbush Zombies.

The DVD and Blu-ray editions contain the theatrical release version of the film, an unrated cut containing approximately twelve minutes of additional footage, deleted scenes and three featurettes: "A Look Inside The Man with the Iron Fists", "A Path to the East", and "On the Set with RZA".

[4] The New York Times's Manohla Dargis called it an erratically enjoyable product of a deep cinephile passion for the martial arts genre.

Dargis praised Crowe's performance and Byron Mann's "gaudy baddie with heavy-metal hair and a psycho grin", but considered RZA's central role a mistake, saying "with his sleepy eyes and an affect so laid-back ... [he] is too recessive a screen presence to make the character pop, much less hold your interest".

[55] The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy said that the film is "sufficiently well done and amusing enough to satisfy the appetites of fans who mainline this sort of thing," but considered that in directly acting as an homage to the genre, it lacked any stylistic inspiration or imaginative flair to reinvent it.

Bowles wrote that the film has "beautifully choreographed moments, and the action sequences won't disappoint any fans of slow-motion fistfights and arteries that gush like fire hydrants".

Levy said that the film is an "ultra-violent movie that blends thrilling martial arts sequences, orchestrated and executed by some of the masters of this specific milieu, with a semi-involving tale" that would be appreciated by a young, indiscriminating audience.

[60][61] A sequel was announced by RZA in an interview with the title The Man with the Iron Fists: Sting of the Scorpion but revealed that he's not directing the sequel, instead Roel Reine will direct the film as RZA, Rick Yune, Zhu Zhu, Andrew Lin and Grace Huang will reprise their roles as the Blacksmith, X-Blade, Chi Chi and The Gemini Twins, joining the cast are Dustin Nguyen, Cary Tagawa, Carl Ng and Simon Yin.