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.

Kevin Feige, the President of Production at Marvel Studios, recently spoke to Empire to fill us in on their upcoming features, informing us that Zak Penn is hard at work on The Avengers script:

“Zak Penn is already on board The Avengers [as writer] and he’s spending a lot of his time looking into what we’re doing with Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, seeing how we’re tying it all together. And he’s beginning to outline the script now – he’ll be doing that over the summer.”

“All of the Marvel movies leading up to The Avengers will be based in our new facility in Manhattan Beach, in LA. There will be location work that will take us out occasionally, but our home base will always be here. “