The Avengers

’The Avengers’ Update: Kevin Pennington Joins Cast, SHIELD to Recruit in NYC

And now a little update from a tiny superhero movie called ’The Avengers,’ due out on May 4, 2012. Comic Book Movie received a press release that wasn’t supposed to go out yet, announcing what appears to be a publicity event tied to the start of production on ’The Avengers’ this spring. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first, one other interesting nugget from this press release is the news that Kevin Pennington has joined the cast as SHIELD agent Wendell Vaughn, aka Quasar.

Pennington isn’t a name that’s come out of nowhere; back in May of last year, his name was one of the first circling the role of Ant-Man in Edgar Wright’s upcoming solo film. He’s a relative newcomer with various roles on TV (his first big-screen credit is in the upcoming film ’Horrible Bosses’), and while the superhero Quasar comes with a bit more exciting substance built into his mythology, chances are all Pennington will get to do in this film is act as a SHIELD security guard or something along those lines. We won’t expect much from him until the franchise begins to expand more into additional sequels.

Meanwhile, about that publicity event. The press release states:

During principal filming, SHIELD will be out in full force in NYC to recruit and find new members. Cast members on hand include Samuel L. Jackson (Director Nick Fury), Clark Gregg (Agent Phil Coulson), Cobie Smulders (Agent Maria Hill) and Kevin Pennington (Agent Wendell Vaughn). Fans will get the chance to meet the stars and get their photograph taken with them at the event.

Nothing official is out there (and no dates were revealed in the release), so take this with a grain of salt for now. However, based on what we’re seeing this definitely sounds legit, and it also sounds like something the studio would do to help educate fans more on SHIELD, as well as to introduce their newbie actors like Cobie Smulders and Kevin Pennington, who will probably factor heavily into the Marvel universe as things progress.