Scheduled release: July 26, 2013.

Kenneth Branagh won't return to direct, but will likely be involved in some producing capacity.

Brian Kirk, who gained acclaim for his work on HBO's Game of Thrones, may take over from Branagh.

Deadline New York is also reporting that a director from Game of Thrones will handle this film, but they're saying that it's Alan Taylor.

So, maybe the Executioner will be the villain?

The Ninth Doctor will be Malekith The Accursed.

And it appears the film will be called Thor: The Dark World.

Mr. Eko will be Algrim the Strong and Kurse.

On-set pics showing the Dark Elves and Christopher Eccleston as the villain Malekith the Accursed.

I must say, they look cool. I'm hoping the film will focus more on Asgard than Earth, and have more of a Lord of the Rings feel to it.

Shot of Chris Hemsworth as Thor bashing one of the Dark Elves!

I took your word for it that one of those characters was Christopher Eccleston, but when I looked again, isn't some other Chris?

Sorry, I don't know where that assertion came from. It must've been on the website I found that linked to the MTV page. That first site on which I found that link must've been an unreliable one. Sorry.

No problem. Just wasn't sure if I was missing something or not.

According to imdb.com it is going to be Christopher Eccleston as Malekith, so Luigi is right.

Could well be. All I saw was a bunch of people in makeup and couldn't figure out who was who because the page didn't include his name but did mention someone else named Chris.

Chris Kringle? Chris tmas?

First trailer!

It definitely looks to have a more epic scope than the previous film. At least, it seems to feature more scenes of epic battle in Asgard than the "fight the Destroyer in a small desert town" schtick of the first film. Let's hope the writing is better too.

New trailer! It's as good as the first one, IMO.

There will be two credits sequences, the first one, a mid-credits sequence that teases the upcoming films, and the second, a post-credits sequence for laughs, like the shawarma scene at the end of The Avengers.

If I knew more about both the THOR comics storyline and Norse mythology a lot of the questions I have about this movie might be answered, but I still enjoyed it a fair amount nontheless.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!

It seemed to me that there were a number of instances throughout the movie that relied on coincidences to move the plot along, starting with Jane's discovery of the Aether. This thing was supposedly "buried deep where no one will ever find it" and she happens across it in her first experience with one of those portals, standing out in the open in a large underground structure no less.

When the elves attack Asgard, they use rifles of some sort that fire red bursts of energy, against people yeilding swords and shields. The Asgardian shields appear to deflect/absorb these attacks but not when the soldiers are hit on their bodies. Wouldn't their body armor be made out of the same material as the shields? The elves also have this grenade-like device that instead of an explosion creates a temporary black-hole, which is actually really cool

When Thor goes to recruit Loki from his cell he somehow immediately senses that Loki has created an illusion that shows a pristine cell. However, later when Loki 'dies' Thor doesn't even suspect even the slightest amount of trickery, and nobody apparently detects anything wrong with Odin.

The humor in the movie mostly hits its mark, and is actually the best parts of some scenes, but there were a few occasions where I felt it was poorly timed, particularly a couple during the final battle.

Perhaps I'm taking the term Infinity Stone too literally, but the Aether wasn't even a solid mass. If the cosmic cube is the Stone of Space, as someone in Marvel apparently said it was, what would that make the Aether? I don't know much about the Infinity Stones but from what little I do know I would've guessed that the Tesseract was Power, since it powered weapons, and the Aether was Space, since it was altering space, but I suppose that's what I get in trying to make sense out of a movie that is based on a comic-book which was based on Norse mythology.

I'm deeply challenged by the way that one Dark Elf ship was able to so dominate the Asgardians. Asgard beat down the Dark Elves until they were reduced to one ship, but thousands of years later (when, one hopes, Asgardian science had had thousands of years to advance) that same ship, without upgrades, could strike at the heart of Asgard and had Odin and Thor scared silly.

In fairness, it appears that all the invading Dark Elves that disembarked were killed except Malekith and his lieutenant, with the loss of several small ships. Also, the Asgardians didn't know that Malekith threw everything he had at them; for all they knew there was a whole fleet of Dark Elves out there. Also, the martial power of Odin's father, during a final push in a big war, may have been considerably greater than after relative peace and then the sudden internal convulsion following the lost of the Bifrost---compare the power of the U.S. military during Desert Storm, with a Cold War-winning force with what remained only ten years later after peace dividends. Still, thousands of years to figure out how to defeat such enemies. . .

I'm assuming there's some real-world reason Horgun was kicked out of the way? The rest of the Warriors Three had their moments, but hardly major roles that would demand months of shooting.

How Thor The Dark World Should Have Ended:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqG1lftRK00wing