Thor And The Avengers Progress Report
It feels quite odd to be reporting a story fromEmpiremagazine that doesn’t reference their all-stops-pulled anniversary issue, but here we go. Proving that there is life after 20, Empire today published some tidbits gleaned from an interview with Marvel movie mogulKevin Feige. Though they’re keeping back theIron Man 2material for the next print issue, they’ve webbed a pair of updates forThorandThe Avengers.
According to Feige, we can expect casting announcements onThorin the next “month or so”, but not necessarily in the case of the lead:
We’re looking to cast Loki and Odin soon, and the main female role.
He also confirms that production is likely to take place next year, afterKenneth Branagh’s recent comment that shooting should kick off in January. According to Feige, Branagh is at the moment busy devising the action sequences:
…but Branagh’s here, we’re prepping, and he’s put together some spectacular animatics already for our first action scene. We’re digging into the second and third now, and we are just embarking on a rewrite of the draft.
Incidentally, theGuardianhave today passed along the BBC’s confirmation that three more feature-lengthWallanderfilms, starring Branagh in the title role, are to be shot this summer.
As for thoseAvengers, it sounds as though screenwriterZak Pennis hard at work trying to grasp how theIron Man,ThorandCaptain Americafilms are being tied together (note: he makes no mention ofThe Hulk). Feige says:
He’s beginning to outline the script now – he’ll be doing that over the summer. All of the Marvel movies leading up toThe Avengerswill be based in our new facility in Manhattan Beach, in LA. There will be location work that will take us out occasionally, but our home base will always be here.
Wolverine’s smash landing at the BO, even in the face of high-caliber piracy, seems to suggest that the four-color cash cow has plenty left to give… but aren’t you just a teensy bit tired of endless superhero movies by now?
