Before Joss Whedon signed on to write and direct The Avengers, Zak Penn turned in a draft which it's widely believed would have focused on Earth's Mightiest Heroes doing battle with The Hulk. However, Whedon has now revealed that one of his own earlier drafts of the movie looked totally different and put the spotlight on The Wasp instead of Black Widow and actually included another surprise villain.
Iron Man was very much the focal point of the superhero ensemble anyway but Whedon found a way to tie it into the Armoured Avenger's solo franchise by introducing Ezekiel Stane to back up Loki.
"We went through a lot of insane iterations of what might be. At the very beginning, I wrote entire drafts that had no bearing on what I would eventually film. There was a moment where we thought we weren’t gonna have Scarlett [Johansson], and so I wrote a huge bunch of pages starring The Wasp. That was not useful. I also worried that one British character actor was not enough to take on Earth’s mightiest heroes, and that we’d feel like we were rooting for the overdog. So I wrote a huge draft with Ezekiel Stane, Obadiah Stane’s son, in it. Kevin looked at it and said, “Yeah, no.” [Marvel Studios co-president] Louis D’Esposito actually at that point said, “Yeah, Kevin, it’s all wrong, but look how good it is. Like this is really good wrong.” That was a nice boost."
It definitely would have been interesting to see how The Wasp's presence might have changed the movie, while Ezekiel is a character with a lot of potential who could have helped change the dynamic of the movie in a big way. Still, it's hard to escape the feeling that the right decision was made to focus solely on the God of Mischief but it's also tough not to wonder what this draft of the script looked like.
What do you guys think of these new details from Whedon? Share your thoughts in the usual place.