Kevin Feige Confirms Line-Up For The Avengers

Making a coherent Avengers film that somehow bridges the styles of the other Marvel universe movies probably won't be an easy job for whoever gets the job. Fans of the comic series are fairly well prepared to see discordant arrangements of characters both crossover and team up, but for a mainstream crowd, the collage might seem a little jarring.

Kevin Feige, the man that Marvel has awarded with the tricky role of orchestrating the whole multi-movie shebang, has recently given an interview to SFX magazine here in the UK. As well as discussing how on earth they're going to pull these disparate strands together, he also let slip the line-up of established characters we can expect to see in the Avengers picture.

...its three people, four including Hulk , five including Nick Fury – who you have seen before in other movies, coming together for the very first time.

That's good to know. But will Edward Norton be returning to the role, or will Dr. Banner have to be recast again?

Feige doesn't exactly make a promise here, but if he's being honest they certainly seem to want Norton on the job. Here's his answer when asked if the actor will return:

I think there's a chance, its certainly our intention to use the same actors from film to film where we can.

It makes sense, both creatively and commerically. It'd be hard to shift quite so many Incredible Hulk Blu-rays if the film ends up being orphaned from the Avengers continuity.

The blending issue I'm most worried about is just how Thor, essentially a pseudo-science padded retelling of Norse Myth, will mesh with the relatively grounded Iron Man. SFX drilled Feige on this too:

We're doing the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby/Walt Simonson/J Michael Straczynski Thor. We're not doing the blow the dust of the old Norse book in your library Thor. And in the Thor of the Marvel universe there's a race called The Asgardians, and we're linked through this tree of life that we're unaware of. Its real science, but we don't know about it yet. The Thor movie is about teaching people that.

Er... whuh? Teaching people? That's not quite what I'd call it.

I'm still half-expecting the Avengers movie to be canned in favour of an Iron Man 3, though I suppose Thor or Captain America would have to tank miserably to bring that about and I'm not expecting they will.

A final note about Wasp and Ant Man: I don't think Feige is saying they won't be in the film, just that we won't be seeing them in other pictures before. So, by extension, can we expect World's End or Baby Driver from Edgar Wright next? And will he ever even get to make his Ant Man movie? Let's see.