Robert Buckley as Bucky? Who’s Captain America?

It’s now March 3, 2010 which means that the casting deadline of March 1st as revealed by Joe Johnston, director of The First Avenger: Captain America has come and gone and we still don’t know who Captain America is. We at least know a group of candidates but that may not actually represent all of the possibilities of who could be selected.

At a press conference for Johnston’s recently released Wolfman several weeks ago, the director revealed during the Q&A some details about Captain America and the casting criteria. We found out from him that the actor would definitely be American, that he would be young and relatively unknown, surrounded by bigger stars in the supporting cast (similar to the setup with Kenneth Branagh’s Thor). The one sticking point that had fans excited was that he also said they’d have the hero selected by March 1st.

Fast forward a few weeks and reports hit the net that Marvel has narrowed down the potential wishlist of Captain America candidates to a select group of young actors. Of that list, the name that got the most attention was John Krasinski, apparently a top contender. I have a feeling though that while they may have been keen on that idea, many fans were not and I think this may be what’s holding the process up.

Needless to say, the selection of who will play Steve Rogers is an extremely important decision for the future of Marvel Studios. Their in-development films literally depend on this choice. If they were leaning toward Krasinski, the intense negative feedback to his candidacy could be why we’re still waiting to hear who’ll wield the symbolic shield and lead The Avengers. That or Johnston was just throwing out that statement when they still needed to test more actors.

I think many have a tough time buying Krasinski outside of his character’s trademark attributes and goofy facial expressions from the hit NBC series The Office and like me, have difficulty picturing him leading Iron Man and Thor into battle.

The other rather large rumor that surfaced just prior to the listing of these candidates was that actor Robert Buckley was cast as Captain America. This original report was quickly taken down and this may be because they were asked to take it down or because it was completely false. Fortunately for us and a few other sites like our friends at IESB, we caught it in time.

From what I’m hearing now, that may not be entirely off the mark. What I’ve been told is that Buckley did audition for the role of Captain America but they thought he might be a good fit for Cap’s sidekick, Bucky. He was/is in talks for the movie and someone jumped the gun on presuming he was selected for the title role.  If you’re a reader of the Marvel Comics, then you know Bucky takes up the mantle of Captain America after Steve Rogers is assassinated in the conclusion of the Civil War cross-over event. So by geek technicality, we could say that he is cast as a future Captain America if his is signed as Bucky…

This is a similar situation to what we saw with Tom Hiddleston in Thor where he was a candidate who auditioned for the role of the Mighty God of Thunder but director Kenneth Branagh thought he’d be a better fit for the role of Loki and he got it. As for Buckley, none of this is confirmed and there could be more names show up for both roles that we’ve not come across yet in the reports. It could be a few weeks still before the decision is made.

Stay tuned as major news will be breaking soon for Captain America.

Any predictions on who’ll play Steve Rogers?

The First Avenger: Captain America hits July 22, 2011 and The Avengers is scheduled to debut May 4, 2012.

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