It seems Marvel’s The Avengers could have turned out very, very differently indeed.

According to an upcoming Joss Whedon biography by Amy Pascale (via Business Insider), after Joss Whedon read the first draft Disney was sitting on, he was brutally honest with Marvel boss Kevin Feige.

“You don’t have anything,” Whedon told Feige, of the script that X-Men screenwriter Zak Penn had written. “You need to pretend this draft never happened.”

These were bold words from the director, considering he hadn’t yet been brought on to helm the project. But Feige let Whedon go home and write a five-page treatment for the film; his film. The rest, as we know, is history.

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