'He's an Asshole and a Bad Person;' Original Avengers Screenwriter on Joss Whedon, Who Replaced Him

The Avengers rocked superhero cinema for good and opened the road to success for Marvel in 2012. However, it was a very bumpy road, as the movie's would-be screenwriter Zak Penn wants to make us aware. In the book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios by Joanna Robinson, Gavin Edwards and Dave Gonzales, Penn revealed how he came to be replaced by Joss Whedon.

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The first script of The Avengers, which Zak Penn worked on for several years, was hopeless, according to producer Kevin Feige. So the offer to work on the movie was given to Joss Whedon and he was not going to just fix his predecessor's mistakes, but rather start from scratch, based on his own idea. Penn was shocked by this change. He stated that Whedon hadn't even contacted him after taking over as screenwriter, and that several years of work on the story had been thrown in the trash.

Feige, however, demanded that Penn's main plot points be retained - Loki as the villain, the Avengers' conflict before becoming a team, the final battle for Earth.

Interestingly, Penn is not the first person that had a problem with Whedon. The filmmaker has been repeatedly accused of bullying on the sets of his productions. The most profilic was the conflict of the screenwriter with the stars of Justice League, including Ray Fisher, Gal Gadot and Jason Momoa. Joss Whedon has been attending therapy for several years for post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from a difficult childhood. Let's hope he can get back on track.

Such behind-the-scenes actions are not the best PR for the MCU, but today we already know that the first Avengers turned out to be a smash hit and was one of the highest-grossing movies in history.

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