Even superheroes rarely fly so high only to fall as far as Joss Whedon. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator was already popular among nerd circles, but he became a true geek god upon directing The Avengers in 2012 and helped Marvel reshape the face of cinema as we know it.
What happened next would probably take its own blockbuster-sized movie to cover, but suffice it to say mixed reactions to sequel Age of Ultron and hideous reviews for his theatrical cut of Justice League saw the wheels already begin to come off the Whedon hype train. And then when Buffy and Justice League cast and crew members came forward to denounce the writer/director/producer’s toxic workplace behavior, that sealed the deal. A decade after The Avengers and Whedon is unlikely to direct another superhero movie ever again.
And yet Whedon’s time with Marvel has skipped much of the controversy his many TV showrunning jobs and his brief stint at DC have endured. However, one veteran of the movie has come forward to share their own shocking and upsetting experience with the director.
Joss Whedon made one harsh decision on The Avengers that cost an old friend millions
If you’ve ever paid attention to The Avengers‘ credits, you might’ve noticed that while Whedon gets a full “written by” credit he shares the “story by” credit with Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk, Free Guy). In actual fact, Penn wrote the entire original screenplay for the film.
When Whedon was hired as a director, Penn hoped that they might collaborate in some form, something that didn’t seem impossible given that they were actually old friends. Both Whedon and Penn had attended Wesleyan University together and somewhat traveled in the same circles. Unfortunately for Penn, Whedon could not have been more cold to the idea.
“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,’ Penn revealed in tell-all book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios. Taking the initiative to reach out himself, Penn was faced with a cruel snub: “He said to me, ‘No, it’s not awkward for me. I’m rewriting you.’ It became pretty apparent that he had less than zero interest in, in any way, having me involved with the movie.”
Penn, who had been working on The Avengers for years at that point, pleaded with Whedon to think about how being removed from the project would affect his reputation, and even that of his children.
“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’?” Penn argued, only for Whedon to respond: “What’s going to happen when my kids think that you wrote half the story?”
Penn wrapped up his recollection by offering his personal opinion of Whedon in no uncertain terms, admitting that the director refusing him a co-writing credit ultimately cost him “millions and millions of dollars”:
“I think he’s a d*ck,” Penn stated. “I think he’s a bad person, and it was really surprising. Remember, my bonus is based on my credit. 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.”
While the cast of The Avengers, such as Scarlett Johannson, appear to have had a positive experience working with Joss Whedon in the MCU, Penn’s experience definitely mirrors that of others who have had the misfortune of falling on his bad side in other projects, including Buffy‘s Charisma Carpenter, Gal Gadot, and Ray Fisher, who ultimately assembled to turn Whedon’s reputation around.