'Captain America' Casting Updates

With Iron Man 2 just hours away, there's news from Marvel about the last Avengers on-ramp, The First Avenger: Captain America. The project was twisting in the development wind for a while, but ever since Chris Evans came aboard as America's first super soldier, Steve Rogers, things have really sped up. Here's the latest: As had been long suspected, Hugo Weaving will play Red skull and I suppose that means his alter ego, Johann Schmidt, as well. I'm so glad Weaving continues to find interesting ways to play antagonists. This should give him plenty of space to do just that. The other news, which probably isn't terribly surprising, either, is that Howard Stark - father of Tony - will appear in Captain America. That's one way to bridge the past and the present, I guess. John Slattery from Mad Men is playing that part in Iron Man 2 and the character, if not the actor, will be featured in Cap, much the same way Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury has crossed over into more than one film. Jon Favreau tells MTV that the character could be linked to the more contemporary storylines through the last Stark Expo in 1974.

"The Expo dates back to the 1930s, but the last one was in 1974 when Tony’s father was still alive and Tony was just a kid. It does figure in to the other films because in the Captain America movie you’re going to see the early one, which I think is a lot of fun. They’re going to have a reference to Tony’s father, Howard Stark, played by John Slattery, and his earlier Expo. But I don’t want to say more than that.”

And here's a commercial for the '74 Stark Expo: The two announcements come weeks before the film gets underway in England and on the heels of the casting of Sebastian Stan as Bucky - rumored to have a pretty healthy role, actually - and Hayley Atwell as Steve Rogers' main squeeze, Peggy Carter.