Will Jon Favreau Direct The Avengers?

It's no secret: Jon Favreau would love to helm an Avengers movie. He's has gone on the record multiple times talking about the possibility. But after Marvel announced their overly ambitious release schedule, Favs was forced to admit that the production schedule would likely prevent him from doing so.

I would love to. Clearly I have stated that The Avengers would be fun. But I look at their release schedule and they have announced 'Iron Man 2? for 2010 and then Avengers for 2011. I know from experience there is no way I could. I don't know what they have in mind, but there is no way that The Avengers could be done in a year. Either they are thinking about somebody else doing it or they have something up their sleeve that I don't know.

But as you now know, Marvel decided to push back the release date of The Avengers an entire year to May 4th, 2012. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Today a spy over at AICN confirms my suspicions:

"The Avengers is delayed a year because of financing issues but also because the plan is for Favreau to helm it. Everybody here loves the guy and he wants to do it, but it would have been impossible for him to do before the date change given his Iron Man 2 commitments. Also partly the reason why he agreed to do the Stark sequel on such an accelerated schedule was so he could get given first dibs on this. It would still be a punishing schedule for him, so hes not firmly confirmed yet, but he is certainly the presumptive director at this point."

Clearly Favreau is the best many to helm Marvel's superhero team-up film. He's been talking about the idea since he got hired to direct Iron Man, and we all know how that turned out. Can you think of a better filmmaker for the job?