Whedon insisted on writing the screenplay himself. “There was a script,” Whedon conceded. “There just wasn’t a script I was going to film a word of.” That initial Avengers screenplay was by Zak Penn, who was shunted aside again, just as he had been when Edward Norton signed on to The Incredible Hulk. “All the other directors we had been talking about, Joss wasn’t on the list,” Penn said. “I heard he was going to rewrite the script himself. He didn’t even want to meet with me—which, by the way, I always call the writer I’m replacing. I feel like that’s courtesy.” That snub was particularly
