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It's been a while since we've checked in with Scriptland (discarded original title: Final Draft Aficionado), the LAT's weekly column on "screenwriters," the mythical creatures sometimes credited with creating the story/dialogue combinations that become movies once producers, directors, and actors collaborate to make sense of the jumble of oddly formatted words called "screenplays." Today's piece looks at a mild Comic-Con controversy that arose over the authorship of the upcoming The Incredible Hulk, Marvel's attempt to reboot a franchise it had brought to the screen as recently as the summer of 2003. Fans needed to know: Was the scribe comic-book-flick go-to guy Zak Penn, writer of X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Elektra, or Ed Norton, an actor—gasp!— with a reputation as a selfless improver of script pages in need of a quick punch-up and who may or may not have generated the uncredited idea that ex-girlfriend Salma Hayek's titular Frida character should have a mustache that would distract from her frequent toplessness? The Times explains:

In the case of "Hulk," after another writer's treatment was declined in early 2006, Marvel hired Penn, who wrote three drafts over a year. By spring 2007, Penn was about to go off to promote his movie "The Grand," but the studio and the director, Louis Leterrier ("The Transporter"), still felt that the screenplay needed work.

When Norton came in to meet about starring as Banner in April, the film had already been greenlighted and there were just three months before shooting was scheduled to begin, just after Independence Day. But Norton had well-established (if underground) writing experience and strong ideas about how to separate the film from any confusion over its connection to the 2003 Ang Lee version by casting it in a more distinct, starting-over vein like "Batman Begins" or "Casino Royale."

So Norton's initial deal included payment not just for his acting services but for his writing talents too, with his draft contractually stipulated to be turned around in less than a month. As it turned out, Norton delayed work on another screenplay job to do "Hulk," and he continues to tweak the script as principal photography hits its halfway point outside Toronto.

We trust that this explanation clears up any confusion over the Hulk credits. And with Norton's role as writer now so publicly recognized, hopefully he can avoid the eye-rolls of reporters who think he's just another egomaniacal actor bragging about how he came up with all of his own good lines when he claims that "HULK SMASH!" was just something he thought of between takes.