Thor actor, Chris Hemsworth, has joined F. Gary Gray at the negotiations table at Sony with a view to joining the Men in Black spin-off.
The spin-off has already been written by Iron Man scribes Matt Holloway & Art Marcum and the studio greenlit the picture on their draft. Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald are back as producers and Steven Spielberg will be executive producers. A release date of June 14, 2019, has already been set.
Also in the news – Gemma Chan joins Brie Larson in Captain Marvel
The new project is expected to be within the same universe inhabited by Agent’s J and K (Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones) but the pair are not expected to return for the new global adventure. It has also been revealed that the studio are looking for a diverse line-up of leads with a white male, a female of colour and an older man all be juggling with.
Sony have toyed with the idea of crossing the Men in Black universe with that of the Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill led 21 Jump Street, but that idea never got off the ground. The new venture looks to be going back to its original premise of a covert force policing the alien population hiding in plain sight, the premise of the comic book series by Lowell Cunningham and Sandy Carruthers.
Gray has also been at the helm for Set If Off, The Negotiator, Law Abiding Citizen and The Italian Job, as well as the money-spinning franchise The Fate of the Furious and Straight Outta Compton.
Hemsworth can next be seen in Avengers: Infinity War and can also be seen in Bad Times at the El Royale alongside Dakota Fanning, Russell Crowe and Jeff Bridges.