Just coming through the wire: Disney has announced that Joss Whedon has officially signed on to write and direct Avengers 2 for Marvel Studios. Not only that, but he has also signed on to develop a Marvel TV series for ABC. Stay tuned for more details, because this is what we Marvel geeks like to call "Holy crap, emphasis on the holy." (via Variety's Marc Graser on Twitter)

  • http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt

    Sounds OK, but really I would rather see Whedon working on something original rather than a franchise…..

    • Thad Boyd

      See, I like the idea that he might do something that doesn’t get cancelled halfway through the first season.

      That said, he IS working on Dr. Horrible 2.

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/J3UUBDT4TJRYBTFHGZWWYISUQQ Palindrome

       Yes.  I for one await with bated breath – I hope he doesn’t screw-up the Mrs. Peel character, like the last film.  And Steed needs to be a man of humour and charm. Sorry, Ralph Fiennes.  Reserve your woodenness for The English Patient III – or Five Weddings and Two Funerals.

      • http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

         I for one would watch the ever living hell out of this proposed version of the *actual* avengers.

  • Brainspore

    Mixed feelings. On the whole, television has not been a kind medium to superheroes since Adam West hung up his tights.

    • Emo Pinata

      I would revise that to live-action television for the Batman animated series alone.

      • Brainspore

        I stand corrected. Live-action television it is.

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Huntington/1389561896 Brian Huntington

          Watch Misfits. Awesome show. 

    • http://twitter.com/abstract_reg Reg Robson

      I would say that much of Lois and Clark was good, and the first season of Heroes was amazing (damn writers strike).

    • Snig

      Nobody else saw or liked Buffy?

    • http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson

      Smallville was pretty damned good. Along with the other things mentioned here (Heroes was a personal favorite).

  • rtresco

    Wonder if the TV show will develop as quickly as the Star Wars live action tv series.

  • danimagoo

    At least it’s ABC and not Fox. Maybe it’ll have a chance.

  • shutz

    You know what would work great (and be a perfect fit for Whedon, considering his track record) ?  A TV series centered around Black Widow.  I just don’t see Scarlett Johannson signing up for a TV series, though, and she seemed like a great Black Widow to me.

  • Scurra

    Colour me every so slightly disappointed.  What I’d really, really like to see is Christopher Nolan directing a Joss Whedon script.  Then perhaps the major flaws in their respective works this year (Nolan’s complete failure to understand how to write actual characters, and Whedon’s inability to direct real action sequences) would cancel each other out and we’d get a bona fide cast-iron classic.
    (Please don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed both of their films a lot, but the flaws were bugging me more than they should have done.)

    • Ryan_T_H

       Really? I thought the action sequences were some of the best handled parts of the Avengers film.

  • Snig

    We had the first Star Trek movie was made by a director who never saw an episode.  Tim Burton’s Batman was famously done by a guy who never read comics.  Joss Whedon in charge of Avengers is orders of magnitude higher investment, orders of magnitude better attention to the writing.  Buffy and Angel demonstrate he can script and direct a largely fighting based/super based TV show.  I’m not going to respond to all the previous flamebaity comments as people are entitled to their own opinions, entirely wrong as they may be.  While you can find flaws in his work, I don’t think there’s anyone inherently more capable of doing this well. 

    • flakingnapstich

      It would be great to see Peter Jackson attached to some comic book projects, but he’s still tied up with “The Hobbit.” That said, I think Joss is a better choice for the kind of things Marvel seems to have in mind.

      Still, I can name one party who probably isn’t happy with this development.

      DC.

      • Snig

        Peter Jackson would be epic too.  If he doesn’t decide to film the Silmarillion next.

  • http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

    An Avengers TV show is likely doomed to fail since no network will allow the kind of budget it’ll need.   This sounds like an idea the corporate suits came up with.  Hopefully, they won’t try laying the blame on Joss when it flops.  (can you say John Carter?)

    • bcsizemo

      Agreed.  CGI is getting cheaper, but still, people want the action and that takes money to make happen well.

    • Ryan_T_H

       Depends on the style of the show. An ‘Agents of Shield’ kind of show wouldn’t need any higher budget than NCIS or CSI or any of their imitators.

      Whedon is a past master of small budget big productions. I guarantee that he can mentally price out every line of the scripts as he writes it.

    • Ramone

      It won’t be Avengers. Misney has already quashed that rumor. Odds on fav is that it will be some sort of Shield/spy-fi show.

  • http://twitter.com/hobodeluxe Jim Shields

    Dr Strange or Heroes for Hire for the tv series.

    • Ryan_T_H

       I like the idea of a Heroes For Hire show. It could be done low budget and Marvel has all sorts of interesting street-level characters. Have some fun with Cloak and Dagger as recurring characters.

      And, hey, Marvel is set to get the Daredevil rights back in a few months…

    • http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson

      Please. Dr. Strange. I’ve been playing with that idea in my head for a while now, and he’s one of the characters that really is too complex to give the movie treatment. You need the length and episodic nature of television to really get his story right…

  • http://twitter.com/MomJokes Mother Joker

    Do movie rights = TV rights?  I was hoping that Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc. could appear on the TV show.  The movie rights aren’t just for movies? I have no idea.