In a Ger­man GQ inter­view with Matthias Schweighöfer (Valkyrie), the actor report­edly (we haven’t seen a copy of the issue and the news hasn’t been pub­lished online) announced he’s in the run­ning for a role in Thor, whilst reveal­ing that Robert De Niro and Jude Law have also been cast. The rumor was orig­i­nally posted to AICN.

I’ve clas­si­fied this as rumor for now, there’s no hard proof and the arti­cle might well have been mis­trans­lated. How­ever, both Law and De Niro have worked with Thor direc­tor Ken­neth Branagh in the past, which gives some cre­dence to the claims.

Which char­ac­ters would these actors play?

In other cast­ing news, Stan Lee has con­firmed to Col­lider that he’ll be tak­ing up his cameo role for Thor, though he doesn’t yet know the details.

Spoil­erTV has posted a cast­ing call for the Thor movie, ask­ing for

[WARRIORS] A fear­less war­rior race, where size, strength and feroc­ity define a member’s rank in both the social and mil­i­tary hier­ar­chy. War­riors born in this soci­ety face the harsh­est eco­log­i­cal con­di­tions imag­in­able and thrive in envi­ron­ments where lesser crea­tures, includ­ing humans, quickly per­ishes. Theirs is a world cre­ated to cull weak­ness from the uni­verse to ensure their supreme sov­er­eignty spreads across the stars. MUST BE 6’2 OR TALLER sptv050769, NO BODYBUILDER TYPES. SAG ROLE BUT NO LINES. MUST BE COMFORTABLE WEARING PROSTHETICS.

Cin­e­mat­i­cal spec­u­late that this is a cast­ing call for the Skrulls,

You can’t really get any more mil­i­taris­tic and con­quest dri­ven than these guys, and one def­i­nitely needs pros­thet­ics to pull them off. But what the heck would Skrulls be doing in Thor? Even Loki hasn’t had much to do with those creeps until recently. The obvi­ous answer would be to have them come in and set up The Avengers, but with two vil­lains and two love inter­ests, you’d think there was enough crazy to go around. Any­one out there have a bet­ter guess as to who our prosthetic-heavy war­riors might be?

Fans have also sug­gested they could be the Kree, a war­rior race that have reached their evo­lu­tion­ary peak or Frost Giants. How­ever, another right­fully points out, it is likely they will just be Asgar­dian extras.

MTV are report­ing that Star Trek and Crank: High Volt­age actor Clifton Collins Jr. is in talks for a role in the Thor adaptation:

“I had a lit­tle meet­ing. I think I can say that much. […] [’Thor’ direc­tor] Ken­neth Branagh is a bad-ass. I’ve been a fan of his as an actor and I know he’s gonna be amaz­ing as a direc­tor for this piece.”

“Believe me, I’m itch­ing to say all kinds of stuff,”

[…]

“It’s going to be a beau­ti­ful thing, I’m sure,” said Collins. “It’s an amaz­ing comic book. If you grew up read­ing these comic books, he was def­i­nitely a bad-ass, that guy.”

No word yet on the char­ac­ter he might play.

Bleed­ing Cool report that British actor Brian Blessed has been cast as the chief Nordic God, Odin, in Ken­neth Branagh’s Thor adap­ta­tion. Odin is also Thor and Loki’s father.

A good com­par­i­son between Blessed and his new role can be made via the Flash movie, wherein he played the King of the Hawk Men:

And in video:

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?