Thor Says Avengers Starts Filming January/February

While it is certainly nice to know that they have officially cast Chris Evans for The First Avenger: Captain America, the selection has had a huge impact not only on the single character film, but also what Marvel has been building towards ever since Nick Fury showed up at the end of Iron Man: The Avengers. The first draft of the script has been completed, the main players have all be cast (with some question marks still surrounding Edward Norton's involvement), and now it looks as though they have a date in mind to get the ball officially rolling.

MTV caught up with Aussie actor Chris Hemsworth, who will be playing Thor in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation next summer, and asked him how he felt about the Chris Evans casting. The response was expected ("He's great. He's got a ton of charisma, and he's a bloke, and I think he has all the points to pull that off."), but the new information came out when Hemsworth was asked about Louis Leterrier's involvement with the film, to which he answered:

The Avengers currently has an expected release date of May 4th, 2012, so the timeline fits perfectly (Thor is scheduled to be released the same week next year and started filming this past January.) Marvel is no doubt already on a serious hunt for a capable director - perhaps one of these? - but it is still stunning that everything is coming together so quickly for a project this massive. This also seems to undermine the rumor that we would get an Iron Man 3 before The Avengers, which simply could not fit a schedule in between now and January 2011. Fanboys rejoice: The Avengers will be assembling soon.