We recently reported that the Thor cast­ing was in its final stages, now we have our first solid cast­ing news. Chris Hemsworth will be play­ing Thor in Ken­neth Branagh’s big screen adap­ta­tion as well as in 2012 as part of The Avengers movie. You may have just seen him as Cap­tain George Kirk in Star Trek, he’s also star­ring as the lead in Red Dawn and Joss Whedon’s ‘Cabin in the Woods’.

How Chris was cast

The way Chris Hemsworth got the part of Thor is one of those great Hol­ly­wood back­sto­ries that hap­pens only once in a blue moon. Ward had found Chris dur­ing one of the manager’s many scout­ing trips to Aus­tralia. Ward brought him to Los Ange­les and really put him out there to cast­ing direc­tors and pro­duc­tion exec­u­tives. As for the major agen­cies, I hear CAA passed on the meet­ing, Endeavor took it but passed on rep­ping him, and ICM was inter­ested but dragged their feet. But Ilene Feld­man under­stood his appeal immediately.

Chris had read for the part of Thor but wasn’t given a test because a cast­ing direc­tor had nixed him early on. I’m told Chris’ younger brother Liam (who’s also a ROAR client) then tested for the role of Thor, but Mar­vel Stu­dios Pres­i­dent Kevin Feige passed. Then, after a con­ver­sa­tion with Ward (“You’ve got to recon­sider Chris, he’s your guy”), Feige decided to let Chris read again. […] Branagh came to town last week and saw the Chris test and made the final cast­ing deci­sion today.

Our old list of prob­a­ble cast­ing deci­sions did not include Hemsworth:

Char­lie Hun­nam
Tom Hid­dle­ston
Alexan­dar Skars­gard
Liam Hemsworth
Joel Kinnaman.

Direc­tor Ken­neth Branagh has spo­ken out about the Thor cast­ing again, this time with MTV:

“We’re down to the final stages of it […] The rea­son one has to be prop­erly diplo­matic, is sim­ply that some tal­ented peo­pled have been patient, kind, cre­ative and really com­mit­ted to work­ing with us in this process.”

“My reluc­tance to say any­thing about it is sim­ply out of respect for peo­ple who have been extremely respect­ful of us. […] That said, I think we are extremely close and I hope to announce a deci­sion sooner rather than later.”

Kevin Feige, the Pres­i­dent of Pro­duc­tion at Mar­vel Stu­dios, recently spoke to Empire to fill us in on their upcom­ing fea­tures — inform­ing us that cast­ing deci­sions on Loki, Odin and the main female role will be made shortly (Natalie Port­man and Josh Hart­nett are rumored). Pro­duc­tion is likely to begin at the start of next year.

“We will prob­a­bly be hav­ing cast announce­ments in the next month or so on Thor,” he told us. “We’re look­ing to cast Loki and Odin soon, and the main female role. And we’ll also hope­fully have lock­down shortly, gear­ing towards the begin­ning of pro­duc­tion, which will be early next year. So I think there will be a lot of announce­ments between now and then.”

“But [direc­tor Ken­neth] Branagh’s here, we’re prep­ping, and he’s put together some spec­tac­u­lar ani­mat­ics already for our first action scene. We’re dig­ging into the sec­ond and third now, and we are just embark­ing on a rewrite of the draft.”

Chan­ning Tatum (G.I. Joe) was a name often men­tioned as a poten­tial Thor player, how­ever, he has recently con­firmed that he is no longer in the running:

“I think they’re look­ing for some­one more Nordic-looking,” Tatum told MTV News dur­ing a press event for his new film, “Fight­ing.” How­ever, Tatum con­firmed that he had indeed been inter­ested in the part, and even met with direc­tor Ken­neth Branagh about don­ning the golden locks and tot­ing the myth­i­cal hammer.

We’re still left wait­ing for that key cast­ing deci­sion. Still in the run­ning, and pre­sumed to be at the top of the list are:

Char­lie Hun­nam
Tom Hid­dle­ston
Alexan­dar Skars­gard
Liam Hemsworth
Joel Kinnaman.

Still in the air are the rumors that Josh Hart­nett may play vil­lain Loki and that Natalie Port­man will have some involve­ment in a key female role.

Insider Nikki Finke and her site Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Daily has spec­u­lated about the pos­si­ble cast­ing for Thor.

She com­ments that there is a big push to cast Josh Hart­nett as either Thor or the antag­o­nist Loki; whether this turns out to be the case is ques­tion­able, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing Hartnett’s pre­vi­ous refusal to play Super­man. There is also an equal force want­ing a rel­a­tively unknown actor to play the role; other actors inline include brits Char­lie Hun­nam and Tom Hid­dle­ston, Alexan­dar Skars­gard, Liam Hemsworth and Joel Kin­na­man.

Mean­while, quite sur­pris­ingly, Natalie Port­man is the cur­rent top choice as the female lead. /Film spec­u­late that this could be either of:

1. Amora the Enchantress, Thor’s Asgard love-interest and antag­o­nist.
2. Sif, Thor’s wife who is also a God­dess in Asgard.
3. Jane Fos­ter, Don­ald Blake’s nurse who even­tu­ally devel­ops feel­ings for him, with­out know­ing that Blake is Thor

Do you see Port­man as a God­dess or Enchantress?

The Thor movie adap­ta­tion has been penned by screen­writer Mark Pro­to­se­vich (I Am Leg­end, The Cell). In 2007, whilst on strike, he com­mented on his plans for Thor with the Daily Her­ald:

“I loved Thor! […] He was my favorite comic book char­ac­ter when I was grow­ing up. When I moved out to L.A. I sold a pretty sub­stan­tial comic book col­lec­tion to finance the trip. But I kept all my old Thors.“
[…] “It’s going to be like a super hero ori­gin story, but not one about a human gain­ing super pow­ers, but of a god real­iz­ing his true poten­tial. It’s the story of a Old Tes­ta­ment god who becomes a new Tes­ta­ment god.“
It will be mythic, but also bear the unmis­tak­able qual­i­ties of a Mar­vel movie, an epic fan­tasy adven­ture.
“I think it’s going to sur­prise a lot of people”

In Decem­ber 2008, actor and direc­tor Ken­neth Branagh was con­firmed as the direct­ing choice for the Thor movie (MTV):

“I am direct­ing “Thor” or “The Mighty Thor’ as you might like to call it,” he said with a smile before clar­i­fy­ing what the title of the film will be. “I think it will be ‘Thor.’”
ortu­nity to hear from Branagh about what appealed to him about the project. So what’s the appeal of “Thor,” Ken­neth? “To work on a story about one of the immor­tals, Gods, extra­or­di­nary beings, inter-dimensional crea­tures,” he enthused.

He con­tin­ued excit­edly, “There’s sci­ence fic­tion and sci­ence fact and fan­tasy all woven into one. It’s based on Norse leg­ends which Mar­vel sort of raided in a bril­liant way.”

When ques­tioned about cast­ing and the then rumors sur­round­ing Kevin McKidd:

“There’s been lots of talk [about cast­ing] — I sound like a politi­cian — but we are too early at this stage. We’re get­ting the story and the visual effects together and all of that is very excit­ing. Some­one sen­sa­tional is going to play the part but it is early days.”

“It’s a chance to tell a big story on a big scale,” said Branagh. “It’s a human story right in the cen­ter of a big epic scenario.”

The cur­rent release date is set to May 20th 2011, orig­i­nally brought for­ward from a June release.

A blog net­work deliv­er­ing the lat­est news updates on a range of in-production block­buster movies.