Screenwriter Zak Penn has long been attached to Marvel’s Avengers movie, and he’s recently begun talking about the project, if only a little bit. SciFiWire quotes him from a panel at the Los Angeles Film Festival, where he spoke briefly about one of the most daunting aspects of the project: continuity.

The backdrop to this story is Penn’s work on the X-Men movies, where he wanted to bring in other characters controlled by Fox, such as the Fantastic Four. But the studio balked; another great Fox decision! Marvel’s approach couldn’t be more different, as made evident by the fact that with Iron Man, Captain America and Thor in theaters by the time The Avengers hits in 2012, the team movie will effectively be one massive crossover story. “It is a world of difference,” says Penn. “It is a lot easier to do things like that, and they encourage it.”

So now he’s meeting with the writers of all the films to come up with a story arch that will take into account everything that has already happened in the individual character movies. That’s not rocket science by any means, but the suggestion is that they’re taking the project quite seriously, and planning things out so that they actually, you know, make sense. Which could be a nice change of pace.

They’re doing Captain American and Thor first, and then Avengers is coming out. They want to see that they’re all connected, not like the Fantastic Four can’t come into the X-Men world, like I was told. 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. I’ll see where they are leaving the characters; it’s pretty complicated…There’s a board that is tracking what is happening…Marvel is autonomous now. It is night and day: Everyone has read every comic. They know how to make a cool movie.