Whedon and Penn had known each other long before “The Avengers” was in production. They’d even gone to the same school, Wesleyan University (Whedon graduated in the class of 1987, and Penn in the class of 1990). That’s one reason why Penn was surprised Whedon completely shut him out of the writing process.
“[Whedon] 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,” Penn recounted. “MCU” continues, saying Penn then guessed Whedon was feeling awkward about replacing him. So, he reached out to Whedon on his own. “No, it’s not awkward for me. I’m rewriting you,” Whedon answered (at least per Penn’s recollection), showing “zero interest” in collaborating with Penn. As Penn pleaded, Whedon gave him the cold shoulder:
“My kids have grown up while I’ve been working on it. They’ve all told their friends about it. What’s going to happen when their friends are like, ‘Your dad didn’t work on Avengers’?” An unmoved Whedon fired back, “What’s going to happen when my kids think that you wrote half the story?”
This wasn’t just a matter of pride for Penn; his bonus for the movie was contingent on screenplay credit, so not getting it would shape his bottom line. “So literally millions and millions of dollars, which is not the issue here, but that just came out of my pocket and went into Joss’s pocket,” he remembers.
Does Penn hold a grudge? Well, he called Whedon “a dick” and “a bad person” in “MCU.” He’s not alone, either.
There’s a reason why Marvel’s original Avengers screenwriter Zak Penn has called Joss Whedon ‘a d**k’ and ‘a bad person.’ Read More