Has Marvel found it's man to direct Thor 2?

Thor turned out to be a modest superhero hit here in the States, but it's $440M+global total was more than enough for Marvel to start pushing ahead on a sequel. The Norse god of thunder, played quite effectively by Chris Hemsworth, is a centerpiece of the entire Marvel cinematic world. He'll feature in next year's big team up flick, The Avengers, and Don Payne(Thor, My Super Ex-Girlfriend) is already hard at work on his sequel. The only thing missing was who would direct.

Kenneth Branagh had a chance to come back and helm the sequel, but politely turned it down. I guess there just wasn't enough Shakespeare in the midst of all those giant flame spewing robots and frost giants. Who knew? But that hasn't slowed Marvel down for very long, as Variety reports Brian Kirk has entered early talks to helm the thunder god's next solo adventure.

Kirk is mostly a television director, finding recent success helming episodes of HBO's Game of Thrones. He also was behind some eps of a few of my favorite recent shows, The Riches, Dexter, and The Tudors.  Thor 2 is already set for a July 26th 2013 release.