Scifiwire.com had some great news today about the Thor and Avengers films that makes me pretty optimistic about the plans for the movies:

Kevin Feige, the president of production at Marvel Studios, spelled out in an interview when we can expect to hear further details about upcoming Marvel films such as Thor and The Avengers.

“We will probably be having cast announcements in the next month or so on Thor,” Feige said to Empire Online. “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.”

As for The Avengers, Feige added that “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.”

From the sounds of things, these movies are all going to be tied together very nicely. I’m pretty excited about the shape of Marvel movies to come.