Kenneth Branagh acted out the whole Thor film

In his latest Cup O’ Joe column, Joe Quesada spoke about his time with Thor director Kenneth Branagh and head of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige. He mentioned one specific meeting as “one of the highlights of my time here at Marvel”.

“It was performance art,” Quesada recalled. “Kevin would give us the establishment of the shot and the situation: ‘Here we are. We’re in (take your pick of location). And here’s Odin and he’s coming up to (pick a character.)’ And then Kenneth would come in and give you the color commentary. ‘Odin has an air of majesty to him’ and he’d act out the Odin part or the Thor part. So we sat there and literally got a three-hour one-man show from Kenneth Branagh. It was fantastic.”

Quesada said that the “very Shakespearean” Kenneth Branagh had a phenomenal grasp on the characters of Thor, Loki, Odin and the rest of the film’s cast.

“He’s definitely about character, which is the quintessential trait you have to have to understand the Marvel characters,” he said. “It’s not just big hammers and capes and things like that. It’s about what makes the character tick. There’s definitely a reason for Thor, a reason for him being and a very deep family relationship and story in the movie that I think is going to be very cool.”

“I think it’s going to be [a tougher sell] on the surface,” he said when asked if it was going to be harder to market the film compared to Iron Man. “[But we've] got plans already to get Thor’s name out within a younger group of kids. I think the upcoming ‘Super Hero Squad’ and ‘Avengers Animated’ shows are going to do wonders to get that across, and then we’re working on a couple of ancillary things here and there to boost the desire for kids in particular to know more about Thor and the general public as well.”

I would love to see some video of Branagh acting out the Thor film. It would be amazing to watch. I wonder if he will have a cameo in the film as Jon Favreau did (although it was a bit more than a cameo) in Iron Man.

The more I hear about the Thor film the more excited I get.

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Marvel Divas

"In the series, they're an unlikely foursome of friends—Black Cat, Hell Cat, Firestar, and Photon—with TWO things in common: They're all leading double-lives and they're all having romantic trouble... there's definitely that 'naughty' element to it, but I also think the series is doing to a deeper place, asking question about what it means...truly means...to be a woman in an industry dominated by testosterone and guns. (And I mean both the super hero industry and the comic book industry.) But mostly it's just a lot of hot fun" - Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

According to io9 Joe Quesada was getting a bit of hassle from people saying this all sounded a bit sexist. He responded as follows.

If you're [a] Marvel reader and truly feel we're sexist, then why are you reading our books? Now, perhaps you're not a Marvel reader, then if that's the case, I'm not quite sure what you're criticizing if you don't read our books?

...The cold hard reality of publishing and trying to sell our books to as many people as possible, so here's an example of what happens more often than you may think here at Marvel. From time to time, we'll be launching a title that doesn't focus very heavily on the super heroic. From time to time I'll get a cover sketch and it doesn't have a costumed hero or villain on the cover, what we internally refer to as a "quiet cover." On those occasions, more often than not, I ask my editors to direct their cover artist to give me at least a first issue cover with the characters in costume. Why? Because it will help launch a book that will most likely have trouble latching onto a large audience. We want to give every title the best possible chance to be successful. Marvel Divas is no different and that's why you're seeing our strong female leads in their super hero personas. Let me try an example outside of comics. I'm a huge fan of Pink, I really dig her music and love her voice. Love her or hate her, I would say that she's an amazingly strong and intelligent female performer and song writer in the pop genre. In many of her songs she even criticizes the over sexualized female pop stars of the day and their over the top videos. But when you look at Pink's CD covers, while she's looking strong and like she's looking like she's having fun, she's also looking really sexy. The reason is simple, she's trying to grab people's attention and sell some albums. Comics are no different and as much a part of the entertainment business as any other medium, and the cold hard truth is that if we were to launch Marvel Divas with a "quiet cover," I guarantee you the book would be canceled before it hits the shelves. That's it in a nutshell, I could sugar coat it for you and give you a million other reasons that would sound plausible, but that's not what I do.

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Joe Quesada talks Twitter, Kenneth Branagh and Thor

The Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics and a superstar illustrator in his own right, Joe Quesada talks to CBR TV about all things Marvel, including the staff's Twitter obsession and what director Kenneth Brannagh has cooking for "Thor."

In this exclusive on-camera interview filmed at New York Comic Con, Quesada discusses with CBR Executive Producer Jonah Weiland why Twitter is Marvel's 21st answer to Stan Lee's classic "Stan's Soapbox" communiques to fans, saying the popular messaging system allows him to answer reader concerns at a rate of thousands at a time. Quesada also details his meeting with "Thor" director Kenneth Brannagh, and what the venerable filmmaker has in mind for Marvel's thunder god. "This is going to be the Marvel Universe on the big screen," he said.

[Branagh] has immersed himself in [the comics]... He was talking about characters and villains that even I was going, like, who was that?, y'know. But if you're a Thor-head, you're going to go, oh right... So it was wonderful to hear this stuff. He wasn't just concerned about Thor, but he also understood going in, from the beginning - because we established very early on... Well, at the end of the Iron Man movie, but very early on [in the process], that there's going to be other movies that become part of this tapestry. This is essentially our Star Wars, our universe is our Star Wars, and he understands that his Thor movie is one of the legs of this table that will interplay with an Iron Man movie down the road, or the Avengers movie down the road.

I've chatted to Joe a couple of times via Twitter and he's always on the ball.

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Thor - "Branagh gets it"

Two of Marvel Comics’ biggest names had a very public chat via Twitter this week according to MTV news. In the discussion, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada and Brian Michael Bendis, revealed a very interesting meeting that took place with Thor movie director Kenneth Branagh.

“Okay, three words describe my day today ‘Branagh gets it!’” wrote Quesada, initiating the dialogue between the two creators. Asked by Bendis whether they could reveal what their meeting was about, Quesada elaborated a little more: “We can’t go into detail but maybe we can say that we met with Branagh about ‘Thor.’”

“Sweet is when [Branagh] starts quoting continuity and past storylines,” Quesada responded to one of his Twitter fans. “The man has immersed himself in Marvel.”

The meeting also seems to signify a continuing trend of collaboration between the comic book side of Marvel and their Marvel Studios wing that helming the films.

Sounds very promising. Now who can play Thor? Karl Urban?

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