Back in 2010, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still in its infancy and Zak Penn (who had written The Incredible Hulk) was tasked with penning the screenplay for The Avengers. When Joss Whedon was hired, he threw out most of Penn's ideas - it's thought that it would have featured the team doing battle with The Hulk - but the writer has now revealed just how different the movie could have been.
Revealing that pretty much no one was confident in the MCU finding any sort of success when Marvel Studios was first formed, he notes that Thor, in particular, proved to be problematic for them all.
Originally, no one thought the God of Thunder's solo adventure would take off when it was being developed...until they laid eyes on Chris Hemsworth, that is! "I remember Chris Hemsworth walking through the Marvel offices, and being, 'Oh, my god, that guy is Thor,' " Penn says, adding: "Originally I was trying to reduce how much Thor was in [The Avengers]. Once it was clear that, no, this is going to work and were excited about it, then I did not [reduce Thor in the script]. I stopped doing that."
It's interesting to think that had the likes of Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger failed to resonate with audiences, both heroes would have probably taken a backseat in The Avengers and quickly faded into obscurity! Luckily, things panned out for all of these characters (well, aside from Hawkeye it seems based on how little we've seen on him in Avengers: Infinity War's marketing).
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