We recently reported that the Thor cast­ing was in its final stages, now we have our first solid cast­ing news. Chris Hemsworth will be play­ing Thor in Ken­neth Branagh’s big screen adap­ta­tion as well as in 2012 as part of The Avengers movie. You may have just seen him as Cap­tain George Kirk in Star Trek, he’s also star­ring as the lead in Red Dawn and Joss Whedon’s ‘Cabin in the Woods’.

How Chris was cast

The way Chris Hemsworth got the part of Thor is one of those great Hol­ly­wood back­sto­ries that hap­pens only once in a blue moon. Ward had found Chris dur­ing one of the manager’s many scout­ing trips to Aus­tralia. Ward brought him to Los Ange­les and really put him out there to cast­ing direc­tors and pro­duc­tion exec­u­tives. As for the major agen­cies, I hear CAA passed on the meet­ing, Endeavor took it but passed on rep­ping him, and ICM was inter­ested but dragged their feet. But Ilene Feld­man under­stood his appeal immediately.

Chris had read for the part of Thor but wasn’t given a test because a cast­ing direc­tor had nixed him early on. I’m told Chris’ younger brother Liam (who’s also a ROAR client) then tested for the role of Thor, but Mar­vel Stu­dios Pres­i­dent Kevin Feige passed. Then, after a con­ver­sa­tion with Ward (“You’ve got to recon­sider Chris, he’s your guy”), Feige decided to let Chris read again. […] Branagh came to town last week and saw the Chris test and made the final cast­ing deci­sion today.

Our old list of prob­a­ble cast­ing deci­sions did not include Hemsworth:

Char­lie Hun­nam
Tom Hid­dle­ston
Alexan­dar Skars­gard
Liam Hemsworth
Joel Kinnaman.

Kevin Feige, the Pres­i­dent of Pro­duc­tion at Mar­vel Stu­dios, recently spoke to Empire to fill us in on their upcom­ing fea­tures, inform­ing us that Zak Penn is hard at work on The Avengers script:

“Zak Penn is already on board The Avengers [as writer] and he’s spend­ing a lot of his time look­ing into what we’re doing with Iron Man, Thor and Cap­tain Amer­ica, see­ing how we’re tying it all together. And he’s begin­ning to out­line the script now – he’ll be doing that over the summer.”

“All of the Mar­vel movies lead­ing up to The Avengers will 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. ”

Para­mount Pic­tures and Mar­vel Stu­dios plan to release the much antic­i­pated Avengers movie on May 4th, 2012 — a delay of twelve months on the orig­i­nal 2011 date. Zak Penn, co-writer of The Incred­i­ble Hulk, is pen­ning the movie with inspi­ra­tion taken from Mark Mil­lar and Bryan Hitch’s Ulti­mates ver­sion of the team. Iron man direc­tor Jon Favreau is set to exec­u­tive pro­duce and there have been rumors that this delay may also put him inline to direct:

–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.

Marvel’s offi­cial word on which super­heros will appear in The Avengers is cur­rently lim­ited to a small blurb on a press release:

In a movie event, THE AVENGERS will bring together the super hero team of Mar­vel Comics char­ac­ters for the first time ever, includ­ing Iron Man, Cap­tain Amer­ica, Thor, the Hulk and more, as they are forced to band together to bat­tle the biggest foe they’ve ever faced.

Notably the words ‘includ­ing’ and ‘more’ are there, so we can be ready for fur­ther super hero announce­ments in the future as devel­op­ment continues.

Who’s in?

Iron Man — played by Robert Downey Jr.
Hulk, pre­sum­ably played by Ed Nor­ton though this is only rumored
Thor, cast­ing unknown
Cap­tain Amer­ica, cast­ing unknown
Nick Fury — played by Samuel L. Jackson

From Iron Man:
War Machine — played by Don Chea­dle
Black Widow — played by Scar­lett Johansson

Mar­vel press release about Iron Man 2 and The Avengers

ROBERT DOWNEY JR. AND JON FAVREAU SUIT UP FOR MARVEL STUDIOS’ THE AVENGERS AND IRON MAN 2

As part of his four pic­ture deal with Mar­vel Stu­dios, Robert Downey Jr. is appear­ing as Tony Stark in THE AVENGERS motion pic­ture, as well as repris­ing his star­ring role as the larger-than-life lead­ing char­ac­ter in IRON MAN 2. Jon Favreau will return to direct the sequel to the block­buster IRON MAN, which to date has grossed over $578 mil­lion world­wide, as well as exec­u­tive pro­duce THE AVENGERS.

DON CHEADLE WILL STAR AS RHODEY IN IRON MAN 2

Mar­vel Stu­dios is pleased today to con­firm that an agree­ment has been final­ized with award-winning actor Don Chea­dle to take on the role of Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes in Marvel’s IRON MAN 2 due in the­aters on May 7, 2010. In cast­ing Chea­dle, Mar­vel replaces Ter­rence Howard who appeared in the role of Rhodey in IRON MAN.

Chea­dle is also signed on to per­form the same role in THE AVENGERS and sub­se­quent install­ments of the IRON MAN franchise.

“We are very excited about work­ing with the extra­or­di­nar­ily tal­ented Don Chea­dle as we expand the role of Rhodey in Iron Man 2. It has already become appar­ent as we prep the movie for pro­duc­tion, that the dynamic between Robert and Don will take Iron Man 2 to new heights,” said Kevin Feige, Pres­i­dent of Mar­vel Stu­dios.