There’s new evidence that Marvel Studios is taking its superhero film business very seriously. According to Daily Variety, the production entity behind this summer’s hits Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk is working to get actor/director Kenneth Branagh signed to direct Thor, another comic-book adaptation. The film is slated for release in 2010.
Branagh made his directorial debut with the epic Shakespeare adaptation Henry V, which earned him his first Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Director. He got another Oscar nod, this time for Best Adapted Screenplay, for his 1996 take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. His most recent directorial efforts have been smaller in scale, the most recent being Sleuth, a crime thriller remake starring Jude Law and Michael Cain. He first journeyed into genre territory with the 1994 retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
As an actor, Branagh has been much busier. Young moviegoers will know him as Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and he’s starring with Tom Cruise in director Bryan Singer’s World War II epic, Valkyrie, which opens on Dec. 26. Branagh has also dabbled in Animation over the years, voicing roles in DreamWorks’ The Road to El Dorado and Steffen Sh’ffler’s 1999 Oscar-nominated short film The Periwig-Maker.
Like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, Thor will be self-financed by Marvel. The screenplay by Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend, Poseidon, The Cell) revolves around a disabled medical student named Donald Blake, who becomes Norse god Thor to battle evil forces. A distributor for the pic has been named. Paramount picked up Iron Man and Universal put out the latest Hulk movie.
