The Avengers gets start date

Captain America

The Avengers may have only just officially bagged itself a director in Joss Whedon, but Marvel and Paramount aren’t wasting any time with their current forward momentum.

The studios have officially announced that shooting on the flick will commence in February 2011, with the superhero mash-up on target for its 4 May 2012 release date.

Joss and co will have to wrestle for space with Spider-man, though, as Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb will also be shooting in Los Angeles, having kicked off production in December.

In case you missed it first time around, here’s what Joss Whedon had to say about helming his “dream” project at Comic-Con...

On why he did it: “The thing that made me excited to do it was just how completely counterintuitive it is. It makes no sense. These people should not even be in the same room, let alone on the same team. And that, to me, is the very definition of family.

On 3D: “Honestly, I’m totally into it. I love it. I think the technology is really good. It kind of puts you in the space. The thing is, if you are making an action movie, 3D lends itself to that anyway.”

On writing the characters: “When I write Tony Stark, or Steve Rogers, or any of these people, they sound like them, particularly because I already know who’s playing them.”

That’d be Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Mark Ruffalo as Hulk, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow and Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson.

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Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.