Kat Dennings Joins 'Thor'?

We can all thank Natalie Portman for letting slip this bit of casting news for the upcoming Thor movie. While plugging the American remake of Brothers (hitting theaters Dec. 4), Portman told MTV News she is "really excited" to work with her friend Kat Dennings on Thor. It just feels like cast announcements have been pouring in for the upcoming Marvel adaptation -- Dennings will join Portman (love interest Jane Foster), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Stellan Skarsgård, Colm Feore, Tom Hiddleston (Loki) and just about everyone else under the sun for what is shaping up to be a very interesting stab at the Norse superhero. Kenneth Branagh will be directing from the script by Mark Protosevich (with Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller).

Of course the burning question here is who will Dennings be playing? MTV's Splash Page and /film both mention the possibility of Enchantress, which seems to make a lot of sense given Dennings's physical likeness to the character. Also, the character's ties to Iron Man and the Avengers could be crucial for connecting Thor to the more reality-based Iron Man movies and the larger Avengers universe. Jon Favreau definitely has a point when mentioning the uphill battle some director will have in incorporating Thor's fantastic/mythological angle into the planned Avengers flick. Not that Enchantress -- a magic-wiedling native of Asgard -- would solve those issues, but at least there's an established plot line from the source material.

The other Dennings-casting idea one /film reader came up with was Hela, the decidedly nastier Asgardian goddess of death. Once again, there's the physical fit for Dennings, although it's probably worth noting that in terms of physicality, most female comic book characters are cut from a pretty similar mold (i.e. a coke bottle outline). Hela apparently has quite a few X-Men ties, which means nothing in a world where Fox still owns X-Men. If I were a betting man, I'd say Enchantress is the more likely given the complexity of Hela's involvement (check out her Wikipedia entry, it's pretty wild stuff).

While both of these are great educated guesses, Dennings could just as easily be playing neither, or some composite of the two. File this one under "just wait and see".