We got a whole lot of news about The Avengers film from Comic-Con and as Joss Whedon continues to work towards starting principal photography in February, he has spoken briefly with The (Australian) Sunday Herald-Sun about the female characters.

We knew that Black Widow would feature in The Avengers and although Whedon has said there will only be one female Avenger in the film, he has confirmed that other female characters will appear. Moviehole have speculated as to whether that might mean an appearance for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts, or a possible third incarnation of Betty Ross (now that Bruce Banner has been recast, it would seem logical to recast Betty as well), but for the moment we will just have to wait and see.

Whedon said of the story that it will be new, but coming from various arcs throughout the comic series, including the original and The Ultimates. It seems there is no shortage of material to draw from which will hopefully result in something that feels fresh rather than the potential bloating that could result from trying to draw so many characters together (as, for example, in Spiderman 3).

The Avengers is due to hit our screens in the summer of 2012, with Robert Downey Jr (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Clark Gregg, Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Chris Evans (Captain America), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk) all on board so far.

Thanks to Moviehole for the heads up on this.

Previous articleFour Minutes of The Walking Dead Footage Online
Next articleNew 3d Poster for Alpha and Omega
Dave has been writing for HeyUGuys since mid-2010 and has found them to be the most intelligent, friendly, erudite and insightful bunch of film fans you could hope to work with. He's gone from ham-fisted attempts at writing the news to interviewing Lawrence Bender, Renny Harlin and Julian Glover, to writing articles about things he loves that people have actually read. He has fairly broad tastes as far as films are concerned, though given the choice he's likely to go for Con Air over Battleship Potemkin most days. He's pretty sure that 2001: A Space Odyssey is the most overrated mess in cinematic history.