When Disney took over Marvel a couple of weeks ago, one of the wildest rumours had it that Thor, the big-budget Kenneth Branagh-directed adaptation of the iconic blond-haired Norse God of Thunder, might be put on the back burner for a while.
Well, piffle and pfft! to that, following today’s news that Jaimie Alexander and Colm Feore have joined the already-swollen cast of Marvel’s newbie.
Alexander, a 25 year-old actress best known for her work on the relatively unheralded TV show, Kyle XY, will play the Norse Goddess, Sif, a tall, toned drink of water who specialises in ass-kicking and who has a fairly healthy, relatively unrequited passion for Thor himself.
Given that Alexander, according to the never-wrong-in-any-way IMDb, was on her high school wrestling team, playing Sif should be a cinch.
Feore, meanwhile, will play against type by portraying a kind-hearted doctor who helps puppies and small children from dastardly villains… ok, we’re kidding. One of Hollywood’s perennial villains will be donning his black hat once more, but that’s all we know about his character as, apparently, the Thor script is so secret that even the actors aren’t getting copies. Hopefully they’ll get them before they turn up on set, unless Branagh is planning to make the first fully-improvised $150 million feature. Think Whose Line Is It Anyway?, but with less Colin Mochrie and more CG.
However, we do know that the storyline sees Thor sent to Earth by his father, Odin, in order to eat some humble pie. Once there, he learns humility and then must save his home, Asgard, from an invasion led by Earth’s nastiest piece of work. We’d imagine the latter role is reserved for Feore.
The newly-cast duo join Chris Hemsworth, who will grab Thor’s mighty hammer, Mjolnir (steady, girls), Natalie Portman, who will grab Thor’s mighty hammer as his love interest, Jane Foster, and Tom Hiddleston, as Thor’s nemesis, his evil half-brother Loki, who will do his best to grab Thor's mighty hammer in a storyline dripping with subtext.
Thor is set for release in 2011.