The Hollywood Reporter is reporting the following:

The superheroes will take just a little longer to arrive on the scene. Marvel Entertainment said Thursday morning that it was pushing back by a year a pair of key properties in its comic book franchises “Thor” and “Avengers.”

“Thor” will now release on June 17, 2011 (it had previously been scheduled for July 16, 2010), while “Avengers” will hit theaters May 4, 2012 (it had been slotted for July 15, 2011).

Execs did not offer a reason for the deferrals; Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel said only that the move “maximizes the visibility of our single character-focused films, leading to the highly anticipated release of the multicharacter ‘The Avengers’ film in 2012.”

…

Had it let the previous dates stand, it would have seen the bunching of two properties (Iron Man and Thor) in 2010 and then three (Captain America, Spider-Man and the multicharacter Avengers) in 2011. Under the new schedule, it will space out the characters more: just one (Iron Man) in 2010, Spider-Man, Thor and Captain America in 2011, and Avengers in 2012.

Of course, anything worth doing is worth doing right, so hopefully the pushbacks mean better quality? Or maybe it’s just them strategically placing their movies for optimum cash? Either way, our wait just got longer. You can check out the full THR.com report via the link above.