2012 is pretty much the year of Joss Whedon. He already delivered a great little movie in Cabin in the Woods, which he co-wrote and produced and now he’s delivered the biggest movie of the year in The Avengers.

Whedon has had a tough journey in Hollywood. Even though he created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, he’s had other shows like Dollhouse and Firefly be buried by Fox and his Firefly movie Serenity was a nice treat for fans but didn’t do amazingly well.

Now though? He could probably get anything he wants made. He’s on top of the world, so he’s reflecting on some of his failures, like his fail pitch for the Batman reboot. History now tells us that it probably worked out best for everyone involved, as we’ve gotten Christopher Nolan’s Bat-trilogy AND Whedon’s Avengers, but it’s interesting to know what Whedon’s plans were.

Whedon tells GQ that his plan was also an origin story, but that he wanted to follow Bruce Wayne as this death-obsessed kid for a good portion of the film. Whedon explains a scene he loved from his pitch:

And he’s like this tiny 12-year-old who’s about to get the shit kicked out of him. And then it cuts to Wayne Manor, and Alfred is running like something terrible has happened, and he finds Bruce, and he’s back from the fight, and he’s completely fine. And Bruce is like, ‘I stopped them. I can stop them.’ That was the moment for me. When he goes ‘Oh, wait a minute; I can actually do something about this.’ The moment he gets that purpose, instead of just sort of being overwhelmed by the grief of his parents’ death.

Warner Bros. wasn’t too happy with the pitch. Hell, it was a pretty terrible day for him.

And the executive was looking at me like I was Agent Smith made of numbers. He wasn’t seeing me at all. And I was driving back to work, and I was like, ‘Why did I do that? Why did I get so invested in that Batman story? How much more evidence do I need that the machine doesn’t care about my vision? And I got back to work and got a phone call that Firefly was cancelled. And I was like, ‘It was a rhetorical question! It was not actually a request! Come on!’

I bet the machine certainly cares for his vision now. His vision just made over $200 million in one weekend and $600 million worldwide. I don’t think studio execs will look at Whedon like a crazy person now. [GQ via /Film]

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