Kenneth Branagh may be the next auteur to sell his soul to the world of superhero movies. Variety says he’s negotiating with Marvel Studios to direct their Thor movie.

I’ve never been much of a Branagh fan, I know that’s not particularly film-criticy of me, but he’s just never done anything for me. Maybe I’m a drunken lout, but give me Mel Gibson’s Shakespeare over Branagh. Still, the guy obviously has a lot of fans, so I went to one of them, a friend of mine from Austin who had this to say about him taking on Thor: “If it’s like his Shakespeare stuff, yay! If it’s like his other stuff, WHY GOD WHY!” Well said JB.

On the other hand, it is a Thor movie we’re talking about here. How many people are there out there who actually care about this character? Yes, that was me baiting you into flaming me in the comments below. It would be sort of interesting though, to see Shakespeare’s style applied to a superhero movie. Is Marvel ballsy enough to do something so outside the norm with one of their properties? Probably not. They’ve made it pretty clear that they’re only interested in comic book movies in which a lot of stuff gets punched. On the otherhand, Kenneth Branagh is no longer the guy who made Hamlet anymore anyway. Now he’s more known waving wands around for Harry Potter and playing second fiddle to Tom Cruise’s eyepatch in Valkyrie.