Favreau had pre­vi­ously ruled out par­tic­i­pa­tion in Marvel’s Avengers movie due to their aggres­sive sched­ul­ing — Marvel’s orig­i­nal release date was set for May 2011, one year after the sched­uled Iron Man 2 release, which would sim­ply make things impos­si­ble. That release date has since been pushed back to May 2012, putting an extra year in The Avengers devel­op­ment cycle. Favreau has pre­vi­ously expressed an inter­est in helm­ing The Avengers movie and com­bined with the relaxed sched­ul­ing opens the door to an inter­est­ing rumor. New spy ‘Fuzzy Dun­lop’ spills the beans to AICN:

–Avengers is delayed a year because of financ­ing issues but also because the plan is for Favreau to helm it. Every­body here loves the guy and he wants to do it, but it would have been impos­si­ble for him to do before the date change given his Iron Man 2 com­mit­ments. Also partly the rea­son why he agreed to do the Stark sequel on such an accel­er­ated sched­ule was so he could get given first dibs on this. It would still be a pun­ish­ing sched­ule for him, so hes not firmly con­firmed yet, but he is cer­tainly the pre­sump­tive direc­tor at this point.

- Iron Man starts rehearsals in a few days, which is why the cast­ing is finally com­ing together so quickly.

[…]

Call me Fuzzy Dunlop