Jon Favreau Will Not Direct The Avengers

With the current and coming crop of Marvel superhero movies leading up to them combining forces in The Avengers, common thought was that Jon Favreau would take the project on as director. Favreau was the one who sculpted Iron Man and created a believable world wherein all the heroes could unite. He currently is working on Iron Man 2 which will release next summer while The Avengers will be out in summer 2012.

In an interview with MTV Favreau states that he will not be the director for The Avengers. The gap was thought to be enough for him to move to it after completion of IM2 but it appears his conflicts will prevent him from taking on the movie. As such it will be interesting to see who they go to since The Avengers will have the challenge of fitting all the characters with their wildly different backgrounds into a central story.

They’ll have to [find a different director], because I’m not going to be available. It’s something I’m being the executive producer on, so I’ll definitely have input and a say. It’s going to be hard, because I was so involved in creating the world of Iron Man and Iron Man is very much a tech-based hero, and then with ‘Avengers’ you’re going to be introducing some supernatural aspects because of Thor. How you mix the two of those works very well in the comic books, but it’s going to take a lot of thoughtfulness to make that all work and not blow the reality that we’ve created.”

The Avengers will include Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and Hulk having been confirmed along with other players from their respective stories such as War Machine, Black Widow, and Loki. There will certainly be others with a couple possibilities being Ant-Man and Wasp who were both founding members in the comic. Samuel L. Jackson is in the midst of a nine picture deal as Nick Fury the leader of SHIELD.