It appears Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury will be getting a new assistant in The Avengers, and Josh Whedon is busy drawing up a shortlist of who he’d like to play the role. THR got the names of the actresses in contention, while on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Samuel L. Jackson let slip that the role will be his ‘sidekick’.
On the list is V star and Whedon’s Firefly alumni Morena Baccarin, Jessica Lucas (Melrose Place), Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim). Earlier speculation said the new female role would be Avengers team member Janet van Dyne/the Wasp, but now it appears it’s a key member of the espionage agency run by Nick Fury.
As with the roles in all the Marvel movies, the company is playing hardball, so that just to test for the role the actresses have to sign a deal that would put them of a 30 day hold (meaning they can’t take any other roles for a month), and that if they get the part they’ll have to agree to a nine-picture deal, covering The Avengers and whatever plans Marvel has for continuing their superhero world after that.
/Film is suggesting that Winstead has now decided against signing the test deal, but the other appear to still be in contention.