We’re guessing Samuel L Jackson will be spending a lot of time at his home looking out for giant, flying death blimps, since he appeared on US talk show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and let slip a few details about his upcoming film appearances that Marvel probably didn’t want getting out into the world just yet. One of the bigger – and less spoilery – news nuggets was that Nick Fury will have a female sidekick in **The Avengers and that Jackson’s screen testing with a few actresses this week.
Upon hearing the announcement, The Heat Vision blog leapt into action to find out more information and tracked down word that Serenity’s Morena Baccarin is on the list, alongside other possibles Jessica Lucas, Cobie Smulders and Scott Pilgrim’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Baccarin, who worked with Avengers director Joss Whedon on both Firefly and its film spin-off, is currently to be found devouring rodents and plotting terrible things for humanity in the TV remake of V. Lucas is a veteran of the current Melrose Place and Smulders is best known for appearing on sitcom How I Met Your Mother. Winstead should need little introduction following her turn as Ramona Flowers, though she’ll crop up this year in The Thing.
Naturally Marvel – and Disney – have been non-committal on the details, so all of the names are rumours for now, but the report also mentions that the role might be that of Avenger Janet van Dyne (AKA the Wasp), though again there’s zero confirmation on that.
What is known is that the role apparently comes with Marvel’s now standard nine-film option. Talking of – and here’s where we’ll offer a mild spoiler warning for anyone staying pure about other movies – Jackson is also locked into a multi-picture deal and dropped some hints about other appearances.
Turns out he’s about to start filming his segments for both Thor and Captain America, but couldn’t say whether he’ll relegated to an Iron Man-style post-credits sequence, mostly because Marvel hadn’t told him. Probably a smart move given that this is Sam Jackson we’re talking about and no one gets to tell him what he can and can’t say…