Zap, Pow - Patty's out!

Maybe it was too soon. Merely eight years after her debut feature Monster in 2003, which earned Charlize Theron a Best Actress Oscar, director Patty Jenkins was due to return to the big screen with the sequel to Marvel's Thor.

Well, that's if you don't count the appearance of the Nordic superhero in next Spring's The Avengers, which Joss Whedon is helming.

It seems that Ms Jenkins, 40, who had been busying herself between movies with TV series like The Killing, Entourage and Arrested Development, has now left Thor 2 due to "creative differences".

Shame, because as Ken Branagh, who was, after all,  an unlikely choice to direct the blond hunk's first film foray, noted she would have been an unusual and inspired candidate for a superhero movie, normally the province of chaps.