THOR 2 (Loki's Future, Director Out)

• THOR 2

One of the big breakouts this year, is Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal of Loki in Marvel Studios' Thor and he'll be returning next summer as the villain of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers.

Loki Concept Art

At the press junket for Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, SuperHeroHype got to talk to Hiddleston about the role that kicked off an amazing year and has made him somewhat of a household name atleast to all comic book fans.

"The whole Loki thing is just so exciting," he told us. "It is quite surreal, because I never expected it to be so fervent, for the passion to be so intense and one always hopes one's work is going to be appreciated, but my God it's a compliment that people have responded to what I did and everybody who’s written letters say such lovely things like 'I really understood what Loki was going through and I understood his emotional predicament' so it’s pretty great."

"It's nice to come back, like an old friend," he said about his return for The Avengers. "When I came back to do 'Avengers,' I'd gone off and done F. Scott Fitzgerald and Captain Nicholls and Freddie Page in the 'Deep Blue Sea' and when I came back to Loki I was like, 'Hey, man, how’s it going?'"

The question on most minds is whether we’ll see Loki in Thor 2 - as if you could keep him away. It certainly sounds like Loki won’t be dying in The Avengers, so Hiddleston will have a chance to work with director Patty Jenkins and he shared his thoughts on what he feels she’ll bring to the table:

Tom Hiddleston as Loki on set of Avengers

"I had dinner with some of the executives at Marvel and Chris Hemsworth and Patty in London and she's amazing, really. She's the most incredibly fearless director and has a really inate understanding of the muscularity of a character like Thor. I'm not just saying he's jacked-up. I mean, the character itself has an enormously muscular, visceral, emotional complexity and Patty understands it, and she understands it in her bones."

While since that interview with Tom, Deadline now reports that Patty Jenkins has departed Thor 2. The search is now on for a replacement.

Patty Jenkins previously directed Monster starring Charlize Theron, who won an Academy Award for her performance in the film. Jenkins, who received an Emmy nomination for directing the pilot of AMC's acclaimed series "The Killing," has also directed episodes of "Entourage" and "Arrested Development."

The original article cites "creative differences" as the reason for Jenkins' departure, suggesting that the split is amicable and that she might return for a superhero non-sequel in the near future.

With a release date planned for November 15th, 2013, a new director is expected to be announced soon.