Super­hero Hype have learnt that The Avengers is set to start film­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2011, to meet a May 4th 2012 release date. Shoot­ing loca­tions haven’t been revealed, but LA is a good guess.

1950s fan made trailer

A fan has cre­ated a teaser trailer for a fic­ti­tious 1950s ver­sion of The Avengers. Com­bin­ing clas­sic sci-fi movie clips, this mash-up is a worth­while watch.

A mem­ber of the audi­ence at SDCC cap­tured the com­plete Joss Wheon Expe­ri­ence on video and kindly upload it all to YouTube — not a huge amount on The Avengers, but worth a watch. We’ve embed­ded a playlist below.

Whe­don has also been talk­ing to MTV about cast­ing Mark Ruf­falo as Bruce Ban­ner and Jeremy Ren­ner as Hawkeye.

Hawk­eye

The thing about Hawk­eye, he’s got his bows and arrows, you need some­body who’s very very down to earth, who’s very grounded, and who’s going to be the kind of guy who, you see him, and you under­stand why he likes to be far away from things and then shoot at them.

Bruce Ban­ner

Mark was my first and only choice for Bruce Ban­ner. I’m stunned that we landed that, just stunned. He has what I remem­ber lov­ing about the show, that qual­ity of, you just look at him and you go through it with him, he invites you in in a way that [no] other per­former has since Bill Bixby. He is a guy who’s been beaten up by life, but not defined by that. That’s what I want from Bruce Ban­ner, is a guy who’s still get­ting it done, even though he has his problem.

Iron Man direc­tor Jon Favreau has also com­mented on the recast­ing at Comic-con:

“It’s tricky,” the Iron Man direc­tor said. “I know Edward, and I dig the guy’s tal­ent tremen­dously. He’s always been a very great guy… I’m sure that how­ever this comes out, it’s going to be some­thing that’s amenable to both the film­maker and the stu­dio. I know that we faced the chal­lenge of recast­ing with Don Chea­dle and Ter­rence Howard, and although I think break­ing con­ti­nu­ity is always a chal­lenge and should be avoided when­ever pos­si­ble, it is the real­ity of the movie busi­ness that some­times things don’t work out.”

Two videos of the on-stage Avengers get together are now online. Watch them if you want to be part of the pal­pa­ble excite­ment of see­ing the cast together for the first time.

At the end of the Thor panel at SDCC, Kevin Feige dimmed the stage and a large ‘A’ appeared on screen, with the voice-over of Samuel L. Jack­son as Nick Fury explain­ing the for­ma­tion of the world’s biggest super hero team. Then Jack­son came on stage and intro­duced the cast, one by one.

The pic­ture, from left to right: Robert Downey Jr. (Iron man), Clark Gregg (Agent Coul­son), Scar­lett Johans­son (Black Widow), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Chris Evans (Cap­tain Amer­ica), Samuel L. Jack­son (Nick Fury), Jeremy Ren­ner (Hawk­eye), Mark Ruf­falo (Bruce Ban­ner), direc­tor Joss Whe­don and pro­ducer Kevin Feige.

At this year’s SDCC Joss Whe­don, whilst on stage with J.J.Abrams, offi­cially con­firmed that he will be helm­ing the Avengers movie adap­ta­tion, set for release in 2012. The movie is still in the out­line phase and in the process of rework­ing the story.

“The thing I love about it is how com­pletely counter-intuitive it is. These peo­ple should not be in the same room, much less the same team. The very def­i­n­i­tion of family.”

In other news, Nathan Fil­lion will NOT be play­ing Ant Man in the adap­ta­tion, Whe­don jok­ingly announced Fil­lion would be play­ing the role, but that Ant Man wouldn’t be in the film. All very confusing.

More solidly, Whe­don has con­firmed that Jeremy Ren­ner will be tak­ing on the role of Hawkeye.

Ed Nor­ton will not be play­ing Bruce Ban­ner in the upcom­ing Avengers movie. He would have joined Robert Downey Jr., Scar­lett Johans­son, Samuel L. Jack­son as Nick Fury, Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Chris Evans as Cap­tain America.

Kevin Feige reports,

“We have made the deci­sion to not bring Ed Nor­ton back to por­tray the title role of Bruce Ban­ner in the Avengers. Our deci­sion is def­i­nitely not one based on mon­e­tary fac­tors, but instead rooted in the need for an actor who embod­ies the cre­ativ­ity and col­lab­o­ra­tive spirit of our other tal­ented cast mem­bers. The Avengers demands play­ers who thrive work­ing as part of an ensem­ble, as evi­denced by Robert, Chris H, Chris E, Sam, Scar­lett, and all of our tal­ented casts. We are look­ing to announce a name actor who ful­fills these require­ments, and is pas­sion­ate about the iconic role in the com­ing weeks.”

This state­ment resulted in a kick-back from Norton’s agents and Nor­ton himself:

This offen­sive state­ment from Kevin Feige at Mar­vel is a pur­pose­fully mis­lead­ing, inap­pro­pri­ate attempt to paint our client in a neg­a­tive light. Here are the facts: two months ago, Kevin called me and said he wanted Edward to reprise the role of Bruce Ban­ner in The Avengers. He told me it would be his fan­tasy to bring Edward on stage with the rest of the cast at Comi­Con and make it the event of the con­ven­tion. When I said that Edward was def­i­nitely open to this idea, Kevin was very excited and we agreed that Edward should meet with Joss Whe­don to dis­cuss the project. Edward and Joss had a very good meet­ing (con­firmed by Feige to me) at which Edward said he was enthu­si­as­tic at the prospect of being a part of the ensem­ble cast. Mar­vel sub­se­quently made him a finan­cial offer to be in the film and both sides started nego­ti­at­ing in good faith. This past Wednes­day, after sev­eral weeks of civil, uncon­tentious dis­cus­sions, but before we had come to terms on a deal, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Mar­vel called to say they had decided to go in another direc­tion with the part. This seemed to us to be a finan­cial deci­sion but, what­ever the case, it is com­pletely their pre­rog­a­tive, and we accepted their deci­sion with no hard feelings.

We know a lot of fans have voiced their pub­lic dis­ap­point­ment with this result, but this is no excuse for Feige’s mean spir­ited, accusatory com­ments. Counter to what Kevin implies here, Edward was look­ing for­ward to the oppor­tu­nity to work with Joss and the other actors in the Avengers cast, many of whom are per­sonal friends of his. Feige’s state­ment is unpro­fes­sional, disin­gen­u­ous and clearly defam­a­tory. Mr. Nor­ton tal­ent, tire­less work ethic and pro­fes­sional integrity deserve more respect, and so do Marvel’s fans.

From the bumpy golf buggy, Jon Favreau shared some Avengers infor­ma­tion with MTV. First up, he will not be direct­ing The Avengers movie. Sec­ondly, Ed Nor­ton will not have a cameo appear­ance in Iron Man 2.

“We want to rein­force a lot of the stuff we started to tip off,” Favreau told MTV News. “‘The Avengers’ is a much larger con­cern for Mar­vel and Kevin Feige, who runs Mar­vel. They’re going to be doing ‘Thor’ and ‘Cap­tain Amer­ica,’ and the way we might start to tease those things in this movie, some of it is stuff that we’ve dis­cussed [and] some of the stuff you do last-minute as you fig­ure out how that stuff is com­ing together.”

“It’s an evolv­ing, amor­phous thing,” he explained. “If we decide and com­mit too early, the secret always gets out.”

“They’ll have to [find a dif­fer­ent direc­tor], because I’m not going to be avail­able,” he explained. “It’s some­thing I’m being the exec­u­tive pro­ducer on, so I’ll def­i­nitely have input and a say.”

“It’s going to be hard, because I was so involved in cre­at­ing the world of Iron Man and Iron Man is very much a tech-based hero, and then with ‘Avengers’ you’re going to be intro­duc­ing some super­nat­ural aspects because of Thor,” he con­tin­ued. “How you mix the two of those works very well in the comic books, but it’s going to take a lot of thought­ful­ness to make that all work and not blow the real­ity that we’ve created.”

“That’s why it’s good that you have the guys from Mar­vel like Kevin Feige, who knows the books well and has been involved with the mak­ing of all the movies, and he’ll be very involved with ‘Thor’ and ‘Cap,’” said Favreau. “You need some­body who has the per­spec­tive of all the dif­fer­ent fran­chises to bring them together. I have the myopic vision of just know­ing and lov­ing Iron Man.“

This opens up the ques­tion, who should direct the Avengers movie?

Some press folk were lucky enough to visit the Iron Man 2 set recently, and in doing so had a long chat with Kevin Feige, Mar­vel Stu­dios pro­ducer. A tran­script from this talk from UGO reveals a few things about upcom­ing Mar­vel movies.

Zak Penn, Avengers screen­writer, shall begin pen­ning the script next week. The movie itself shall revolve around the team sav­ing the world, with a much dif­fer­ent focus to the indi­vid­ual super­hero movies. It shall be global and epic in its scale, a threat that one sin­gle hero can­not han­dle. As such, the bud­get will likely be larger. Kevin Feige would also like to see The Hulk as part of the team, hope­fully with Ed Nor­ton play­ing the role.