Kenneth Branagh to direct 'Thor'?

Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 at 3:54 PM Central

by John Couture

Variety is reporting actor/director Kenneth Branagh is in talks to direct the big screen adaptation of Marvel Comics' Thor. The actor best known for his dramtic turns in all of Shakespeare's tragedies turned movies, is hardly the first name to pop into your head when you think big studio action movie, but perhaps there is some sense of method to Marvel's madness.

Earlier this year, Marvel's Iron Man debuted from another director with more acting chops than time behind the camera in John Favreau. All Iron Man did was surpass $300 million at the box office and stake a claim as the fifth highest grossing comic book adaptation of all time (behind The Dark Knight and all three Spider-Man movies).

Iron Man was also the first film completely financed by Marvel Studios that was an adaptation of one of their properties and thus Marvel had complete say over all the details. The Spider-Man movies were largely financed by Sony Studios.

So, perhaps they are on to something by putting their properties into the hands of untested action directors. And by untested, we mean that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the biggest stretch of a movie that could be considered action oriented on Branagh's resume.

In related news, Marvel Studios announced that Thor's release date would be pushed back to July 16, 2010. In other studio news, Marvel announced that it had extended its distribution deal with Paramount Pictures to cover Marvel's next five self-produced movies.

The deal covers Thor, as well as Iron Man 2, The First Avenger: Captain America, The Avengers and Iron Man 3.