An Update from Marvel Studios! Captain America, Avengers, and More!

The hottest rumors these days revolve solely around Marvel Studios. Everyone is obsessing over scraps of information, and finally there's some solid news from the horse's mouth thanks to some eager Internet journalists, and Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios.

First of all, every Captain America fan (and perhaps even America herself) can rest easy: Matthew McConaughey will not be playing that iconic hero. The other good news is that Cap's origin story will be set in World War II. The bad? Additionally, IESB.net reports that the plan is to remain very faithful to the source material, and completely traditional. I honestly think there would have been riots if they tried to update Captain America, so color me unsurprised by the news. The eye-rolling part of this is that Cap's movie will be titled The First Avenger: Captain America in keeping with Hollywood's love of comic book colons. Of course, the clunky preface is there so that it can easily tie into The Avengers. (There will be a colon in that title eventually, just wait.)

As to who is going to be in the Avengers line-up, it sounds highly probable that the Hulk will be one of the core members, though I think we can be safe in assuming that depends largely on how The Incredible Hulk performs. As of now, Iron Man, Thor and Cap are still the only confirmed Avengers.

And speaking of Thor, look for a new director to be attached to his movie by summer's end. That script is still in the process of revisions by Mark Protosevitch, but Feige revealed that a large chunk of the movie is not set in the real world, but located firmly in Asgard. There is still no answer as to why Matthew Vaughn was dropped after so much Thor talk; there has to be a story there.

Obviously, with all the talk of origin stories and the Avengers line-up, we all want to know who is going to be in what -- and when? "The sky's the limit right now. It's us being very cautious and careful about how we do these crossovers so that we don't collapse under our own weight - as even every 12 or 15 years the comics do; they revamp and do new number ones and get back to what the characters were all about. I don't want [the movies] to forget what the characters are all about and, knock on wood, the interconnectivity will be that extra bit of fun for comic fans." Don't expect them to include the X-Men or Spider-Man any time soon, though. As long as Marvel characters are in use by other studios, like Fox, the rights can't revert back to their maker. It all depends if Fox or Sony want to pander to us geeks by agreeing to their use. Clamor now, maybe they will hear you.

Last, but not least, negotiations have opened with Jon Favreau on Iron Man 2.

There's loads more over at CHUD and IESB.net -- if I tried to post it all here, your eyeballs would fall out. I think this is just the start of a very interesting summer. The Internet might actually collapse on the day Captain America is cast.