Captian Progress & Order Of Events

While chatting with Sci Fi Wire Captain America director Joe Johnston said:

"We need to cast it soon," with regard to casting the heroic lead "We have a very short list, but we're still juggling actors here. I'd say within the next couple of weeks we'll have ourselves a Captain America, I hope.". The film is "fairly early" in pre-production.

Johnson told Film Journal:

"We're in prep. Rick Heinrichs is production-designing and we're set up down in Manhattan Beach [California]. It's the part of the process that I love the most.We have eight or ten really talented artists, and we all just sit around all day and draw pictures and say 'Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this?'

"It's that phase of the production where money doesn't matter: 'Let's put all the greatest stuff up on the wall and [then later] see what we can afford.'"

The plan is to begin the film's action in 1942 & 1943 and "then forward to what they're doing with Captain America now... The stuff in the ’60s and ’70s [comic books] we're sort of avoiding."

The film will go into production at the end of June for a July 22nd 2011 release.

Johnson's next pic The Wolfman hits theaters on February 12th...

Meantime on a related note--Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau revealed via his Twitter that the upcoming sequel takes place before the events chronicled in 2008's The Incredible Hulk, which probably explains why Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) tried to recruit Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) at the end of Iron Man. It seems to explain why Stark approached General 'Thunderbolt' Ross (William Hurt) in the final scene of The Incredible Hulk to discuss his "unusal problem."