It reads like a headline from The Onion, but it’s not: Screenwriter Zak Penn, who’s handling the script for 2012 super-movie starring Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, talked at the Los Angeles Film Festival recently about the difficulties in writing the script for a movie that has to tie into preceding movies made by other filmmakers:
“They’re doing Captain American and Thor first, and then Avengers is coming out… They want to see that they’re all connected… I’m taking a meeting next week with the Thor and Captain America people, and we are all going to get together, and I will see what is going to happen… We all have the best intentions, and it still might suck.”
Before you get your Underoos in a bunch, just relax. He’s not making a prediction about the film’s quality, he’s merely warning about the possible outcome for a movie that has to be so heavily coordinated in order to even be made. On the other hand, Penn did have various roles in writing Last Action Hero; Inspector Gadget; Elektra; Fantastic Four; X-Men 3; and The Incredible Hulk; so you can draw your own conclusions.
Story source courtesy of SCI FI Wire; the snark is all mine.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
“The Sky Might Fall!
Before you get your panties in a bunch, the sky might not fall.”
June 26th, 2009 at 1:03 am
-_________________-
thats a bad sign
June 26th, 2009 at 1:14 am
I keep crossing my fingers that, sometime during the final, seemingly unwinnable showdown against the movie’s villain that Betty Ross is killed in the crossfire and the Hulk freaks out, decimating both the villain and the Avengers and is somehow taken down himself, setting up for a new solo Hulk movie: Planet Hulk.
Can you imagine the after credits scene where Fury and Tony Stark are talking to one another about how they have to contain the Hulk and prevent him from ever causing that much devastation again?
Stark: “I think we should shoot him into space.”
End.
June 26th, 2009 at 4:31 am
No need for apocalyptic visions of doom, people. We can assume whatever script Penn turns in will go through about thirty other writers hands afterwards. It’ll look nothing like the original once Bendis, Fraction, Millar, and Brubaker are finished with it. This is how Hollywood works.
June 26th, 2009 at 5:36 am
He also worked on X2 and PCU. As for Last Action Hero, I don’t know if there’s a writer in Hollywood who didn’t take a crack at that script.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:40 am
Tying the Marvel films into anything resembling the comics’ continuity intensifies the risk that one bomb could take the whole line down.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:44 am
Zak Penn catches a lot of flack but his scripts are usually pretty solid. A writer can’t control what a director does with the script.
Also, The Incredible Hulk was actually a pretty good film, and while I know a lot of people didn’t like the FF movies, for family-friendly superhero movies they’re a lot of fun.
June 26th, 2009 at 7:03 am
As others have mentioned, Penn was involved with X2 (which was great), and 2008′s Hulk movie was also great, IMO. Not TDK or Iron Man great, but still a damned good movie.
Since this stuff generally goes through a number of different writers, and since Penn’s merely stating the fact that a million things can (and often do) go wrong, there’s nothing to be alarmed about. The question is how good the Cap and Thor movies will be, not to mention Iron Man 2, since all of those films are a lead-up to the Avengers movie. If anyone of them takes a total dump, then you might have a problem.
After 2008, I feel like Marvel Studios has earned some trust, so let’s just wait and see.
June 26th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Penn also gave us “Incident at Loch Ness” and “The Grand”, and anybody who can (a) make Werner Herzog into the sane center of a movie and (b) out-Christopher-Guest Christopher Guest… Well, he’s earned some of my trust.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:36 am
There is sooooooooo much extreme anticipation for the Avengers movie. I think it was wise to rein it in a bit by lowering expectations like this.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
We know that the Incredible Hulk and Iron Man have done pretty well but a bad Captain America or Thor could really mess up the Avengers. I’ll reserve my opinion until they all come out but I feel they’re in good hands.
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