Jon Favreau Not Directing ‘The Avengers’; Talks Tying ‘Iron Man’ & Others Together

Of all of the Marvel superhero movies that will fuse into each other on May 4, 2012 when The Avengers is released, Jon Favreau's Iron Man (and soon to be Iron Man 2) is probably the universal favorite. The director's careful handling of the character and wonderful job of adding a sense of realism for us all to relate to made him the unanimous choice of fans worldwide to take up the reigns and direct The Avengers, and it was one of the big questions in recent times. Favreau recently spoke to MTV about the whole thing, and confirmed that he would unfortunately not be directing the ultimate superhero movie, and also about the task of bringing all of these larger-than-life characters together in one movie.

While in Bora Bora for a Couples Retreat junket, Favreau made it quite clear that he would not be directing Avengers because he will not be available to do it. No word on exactly what he's doing that will be taking up his time in 2012 (though that end of the world thing may take up some schedules), but one has to imagine that as a director, he doesn't want to get stuck in one genre forever. [...]