Thor (2010)

Necro · 06-16-2008, 06:12 AM

Thor

Release Date: June 4, 2010
Studio: Paramount Pictures, Marvel Studios
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Screenwriter: Mark Protosevich, Ashley Miller, Zak Stentz
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Jaimie Alexander, Colm Feore, Samuel L. Jackson, Stellan Skarsgard
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
MPAA Rating: Not Available
Official Website: Not Available
Plot Summary: Adaptation of the comic book franchise that launched in 1962. Thor is a blonde-tressed, hammer-wielding hero who's sent to Earth to protect mankind.

Trailer: N/A

Necro · 09-29-2008, 02:38 AM

Kenneth Branagh to Direct Thor!
Source: Variety
September 29, 2008

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Kenneth Branagh is negotiating to direct Thor for Marvel Studios, reports Variety. The comic book adaptation is scheduled for a June 4, 2010 release.

Branagh is the latest in a string of directors -- such as Jon Favreau (Iron Man), Christopher Nolan (the Batman franchise) and Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) -- with arthouse roots taking on big-budget comic book fare.

Marvel will set a distributor for Thor shortly.

Thor, written by Mark Protosevich, follows disabled medical student Donald Blake, who has an alter ego as the hammer-wielding Norse god Thor.

nicee...

James Deuce · 09-29-2008, 08:36 AM

Arent they thinking about HHH for this one?

Necro · 05-16-2009, 09:36 PM

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Has Chris Hemsworth Been Cast as Thor?
Source: Deadline Hollywood Daily
May 16, 2009

Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily is reporting that Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige and director Kenneth Branagh have found their Thor and it's Chris Hemsworth, who millions have now seen playing George Kirk in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. At the same time, the 25-year-old Australian actor, who got his start on the popular local television show "Home and Away," is also reported to play the lead in MGM's remake of Red Dawn, taking over the role of Jed Eckert, originally played by Patrick Swayze. (An MGM representative has confirmed with CS that Hemsworth will be playing the role in Dan Bradley's Red Dawn.)

As has been standard, there is no comment or confirmation from Marvel Studios, but one expects if it is true, it will be confirmed by Monday.

You can read Nikki's report on how and why Hemsworth got the role (and who he was in competition with) over on Deadline Hollywood Daily and then let us know what you think of this casting below.

Thor is scheduled to open on May 20, 2011, while Red Dawn is scheduled for release on September 24, 2010.

Would be pretty cool casting.

Necro · 05-31-2009, 01:53 AM

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Ashley Miller and Tom Hiddleston on Thor!
Source: CineFOOlS, The Daily Mail
May 30, 2009

This week we were lucky enough to talk to Thor writers Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz. . Today Ashley Miller talks about his other projects and of course Thor and I think you will be happy with the answers.

Enjoy...

Lately you have mainly been involved with writing for Television(Sarah Connor Chronicles and now Fringe), how did you become involved in the writing of Thor?

AM-We were in the right place at the right time. Marvel needed a writer (or team, in our case) with a very particular set of skills and experience. Obviously they wanted to work with people who'd done features before, which we had. They were also very interested in people who know how to collaborate, and could turn drafts around efficiently, which we do. That we have a background in genre material and an interest in comic books were big plusses, I think. Owning a complete Walt Simonson run on Thor and being able to wax rhapsodic about Beta Ray Bill didn't hurt our case.

In writing Thor do you approach it as a comic book film or as a fantasy film?

AM-I'm not sure if I accept the distinction. On some level, the answer is simply "yes". THOR is a comic book film in that it's based on the Marvel conception of the character as super-hero. But there are definitely some big fantasy elements working behind that. He is the God of Thunder, after all. It's hard to approach the character without both of those things informing the work.

The biggest challenge for Thor is his otherworld godliness. How do you make him approachable? And tie it in with the realism of Marvel movies?

AM-Thor's powers are godly, yes. And his zip code is a little different. But at the end of the day, he's a man. In the comics, Odin sends him to Earth because he's not perfect. He's brash, arrogant. Even over-confident. We all know that guy -- some of us have even been that guy. Stan Lee's genius was to give Thor-as-hero an emotional throughline we could all relate to, and knock him down a couple of pegs. So on that level, your question answers itself. The challenge is to dramatize that and make the audience see what the fans have known and believed about the character all along.

As for realism, i have to ask you back: what does that mean? If the standard is, does he throw his back out if he hurls the hammer a little too hard... probably not. He's a god. He's incredibly strong. He can fly. He tosses lightning bolts. There's nothing realistic about any of that. But he also bleeds. He struggles. Life kicks him where it hurts the most. Dramatically speaking, the powers and Asgard are gravy. The meat -- and what makes it a Marvel movie -- is the character.

Are you a fan of Thor?

AM-Would you like me to pull my Simonson run out of its bags and boards? Zack had to take me down with an elephant tranq to stop me from throwing in a scene between Thor and a frog.

Is there any Thor storylines you are inspired by?

AM-So many things. Certainly, Walt Simonson's take on the character greatly informs what we brought to the script although I wouldn't say we went to a specific story from his tenure on the book. We saw part of our job as taking all the many approaches to the character over the years (including the myths) and distilling them down into a form that worked for a two-hour movie. There's a tremendous amount of ground to cover, so inspiration has to come from everywhere.

As a writer what would you like to bring to the characters in the Thor Saga?

AM-Grit. Not in the sense that you'd want to see a generic "dark" take on Thor, but in the sense that you want to feel Thor's rage when he rages. You want to see him fight like hell, and take as much he dishes out -- maybe more. You want to have a visceral reaction to the guy, and what happens to him. You don't want his adventures to be clean and antiseptic. You want to see the dirt, and grime and blood. You want to feel every bone crunching moment of every fight. And when he unleashes the storm, you want to feel like you're seeing the power oone who likes the same sexOD at work.
The best example I can give you is the end of Ultimates 2. When Thor shows up and kicks ass, he shows up and kicks ass. He isn't screwing around. There's a certain brutal, cock-eyed realism to Thor in that moment (and through that book in general) that I really resonate to and want to expand on.

As most people will want to see Asgard does it feature prominently in the script or will it mostly be in our world?

AM-Marvel's official description gives you a pretty good idea of what the divide looks like.

With all the Marvel films converging do you have to write with a bigger story in mind? Will you be involved with any other Marvel comic/film writers? E.g J Michael Stratzynski?

AM-We definitely wrote with the bigger story in mind, or at least the bigger universe. Our script is very firmly rooted in the Marvel film world. We were constantly looking for ways to connect Thor to the other movies and heroes, even if they were simply in passing. Part of grounding Thor in the world is grounding him in the specific, fictional world he inhabits. How many of those references and connections make it to the final product are beyond our control, but they are everywhere.
I'll also tell you the nicest thing about working for Marvel, as a fan. You never have to
defend the character to the people who own him. You never have to explain to them why Thor is cool, or what he can do. They are as likely as you are to come up with some awesome bit of obscure continuity and pitch it as a story or character element. It's a very writer friendly place.

The person we worked with most closely on a day-to-day basis was Craig Kyle. Craig has written for a number of Marvel titles, and his passion for the project and for comics is quite something. It was great to have an actual writer so intimately involved with the development of the script.

You are also writing “The Feynman chronicles” what does that involve and what other projects are you currently working on apart from Thor?

AM-THE FEYNMAN CHRONICLES is a spec script we sold to Disney three years ago. It was a lot of fun to write -- it was practically a bar bet. The story was just something we wanted to tell, and figured we'd get some interesting meetings out of the thing. As it turns out, Disney was in the market for a movie about young Richard Feynman racing the Nazis to a strange crash site in the Congo. It was put on hold when Indy IV was announced, which was too bad on any number of levels.

Right now, we're in the middle of a live-action project for The Cartoon Network that
touches on our twin obsessions: super heroes and secret histories of World War 2. We also just moved over to Fringe from our beloved, now-departed Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

On our own time, we continue to come up with spec projects for film and TV. We're looking at a few things we might get off the ground independently with Brian Green. Zack and I have been talking for a while about finding ways to push action movies back toward what they were in the seventies and early eighties. Back then, an action film was about tension, danger and the sudden explosion of violence, not overblown stunts and special effects. They were also about characters -- real, interesting characters who would make most modern development executives heads explode. Where is this generation's Snake Plissken? We'd love to figure out how to put someone like that back on the big screen.

With Lost , the Sopranos an the Sarah Connor Chronicles. TV is becoming a more respected medium , is television maturing ? And would you like to stick to feature films now?

AM-Television has been maturing rapidly for the last fifteen years or so. I'll go out on a limb and say that on the whole, television drama is a much more interesting, creatively successful place than film. As a writer, you're far more likely to be involved with something amazing on the TV side of the business. We love features and will continue to write them and fight for them at every stage of the development process, but I don't see us ever getting out of television.

Where do you ultimately want to be in Writing? And Hollywood?

AM-We're tremendously blessed. We've had the opportunity to write for some amazing projects, and amazing people. Through it all, we've been given opportunities to write what we want to write, and tell the stories we want to tell the way we want to tell them. Not everything has been successful once it's left the word processor, but that's just fine. The things that really do work will always be the things you remember best.

A lot of writers out here become jaded and bitter. They've had the crap kicked out of
them and they've forgotten why they're doing it in the first place, and where their power is. That's not us. We're a couple of very positive guys.

Ultimately, I'd love for us to be at the point where we have to pitch less and write
more. We have piles of material and ideas that haven't seen the light of day, all of
which we love. It would be nice to see it all realized on screen, and to do so without
losing our perspective.

Why writing?

AM-I'll quote Stephen King, who sums it up perfectly: "I love to write stories. That's why I do it. I really can't imagine doing anything else and I can't imagine not doing what I do." In short, it makes me happy.I think anyone who really writes for the love of writing instantly recognizes the truth in that. Anyone who doesn't is in the wrong business.

So that’s the full interview. This has me damn excited. Sorry, I don’t have a photo of Ashley as I got too excited and just added the story. But I will add one when I get it. Sounds great and True to the character. Can't wait

Pretty good read.

RaiZ-R · 06-01-2009, 03:16 AM

Branagh is a good choice to direct this. I expect he'll make a small cameo as well as some form of Asgardian, he has the presence for it.

I love that Thor is gonna be played by a guy from "Home & Away", I grew up watching that show, and got told about this the other night. I had been racking my brains trying to figure out who he was in Star Trek after seeing it, and I think he is potentially a brilliant choice for the role.

I'm glad they didn't go the Triple H/Edge route I'd heard rumoured.

Necro · 10-19-2009, 01:19 AM

Law and De Niro Board Thor Too?
Source:Ain't It Cool News
October 18, 2009

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The superhero movie rumors continue this weekend with word from Ain't It Cool News that actor Matthias Schweighöfer (Valkyrie) told the German edition of GQ magazine that he's in the running for a role in director Kenneth Branagh's Thor and that Jude Law and Robert De Niro have also joined the cast.

If true, the trio would be joining Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Jaimie Alexander, Colm Feore, Samuel L. Jackson and Stellan Skarsgard in the comic book adaptation scheduled for a release on May 20, 2011.

Well that's certainly some weird news.