AICN has a new spy that dished them some very juicy info on upcoming Marvel projects, most notably that the delay in "The Avengers" movie may have been made to accommodate Jon Favreau's scheduling.  According to their report, "Everybody here loves the guy and he wants to do it, but it would have been impossible for him to do before the date change given his Iron Man 2 commitments. Also partly the reason why he agreed to do the Stark sequel on such an accelerated schedule was so he could get given first dibs on this. It would still be a punishing schedule for him, so hes not firmly confirmed yet, but he is certainly the presumptive director at this point."

I don't think you'd hear a lot of arguments against bringing Favreau on board to direct the culmination of this epic Marvel crossover picture.

In addition to the news about Favreau, the spy confirms that Alexander Skarsgard is Branagh's favorite to play "Thor" and that they want to bring Alexander's real-life father Stellan Skarsgard on board to play the cameo role of Odin.  And the bullshit-sounding rumor of bringing Josh Hartnett on board to play antagonist Loki may not be such bullshit as Branagh is apparently a fan of Hartnett's work as Iago in "O".

Finally, the spy says that Fox is moving forward with "Fantastic Four" and "Daredevil" reboots not because they want to revitalize those franchises or because they have good stories but because they don't want the rights to revert back to Marvel.  That does sound like Fox.

Click here to take it all with as much salt as humanly possible.