Captain America, Thor, The Avengers, And Spider-Man 4 Get New Release Dates

Marvel has announced a series of new release dates for its upcoming comic book films. The new dates make more sense from a production standpoint than the old ones, and logically lead to the eventual release of The Avengers film, which promises to combine many of  Marvel's characters, in 2012. Hit the jump to see the new dates.

Thor, which was originally scheduled for a fairly soon July 16, 2010 release date has now been moved to June 17, 2011.

The Captain America movie moves a few weeks back from May 6, 2011 to July 22, 2011.

The Avengers film will be released almost a year later than originally announced, moving from July 15, 2011 to May 4, 2012.

In addition, the studio also confirmed that Sony's Spider-Man 4 will be released on May 6, 2011. Iron Man 2's original release date of May 7, 2010 (just a little bit over one year from today) remains intact. So, overall, it looks like 2011 will be an insane year of comic-book superhero films. Here's hoping the eventual release of The Avengers is able to deliver on the insane potential of this whole slate of films.