Source: Crave.
No. No, he probably will not. That's a sensationalist, nakedly traffic-baiting headline and I feel bad about it. Or, at least, I recognize I should feel bad about it. Anyway, keep reading because this is actually kind of fun...
IP rights can be a funny thing in the multimedia age. Case in point: The reason Spider-Man is NOT part of "The Avengers" movie/continuity - and that Sony is haphazardly slapping together a quickie "reboot" of the film series - is that Marvel sold the "movie rights" to his character to Sony back before they had their own studio (and then became part of Disney.) So, while Marvel still owns Spidey, SONY owns the right to put him in movies... so long as they keep making them, of course.
But Sony ONLY owns the movie rights - TV, video games etc are an entirely different set of contracts and arrangements. Did you see the "Planet Hulk" animated movie? Did you notice that during the quick shot of "The Illuminati" from the comics only two of them did any speaking and the other figures were hidden in shadow? Same issue: The 'shadowed' characters were guys whose movie rights (since PH was a movie) someone other than Marvel Films owned.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, Disney/Marvel have a new cartoon series on deck for their DisneyXD cable channel: An adaptation of "Ultimate Spider-Man" headed up by Paul Dini. Early images and trailers for the series have already revealed that what appeared to the be the "Ultimate" version of Nick Fury (which is, of course, also the movie-verse version) playing a role in the series... but in a (really fun) interview with CraveOnline, actor Clark Gregg - who plays the omnipresent "Agent Coulson" in the majority of the Avengers tie-ins thus far - confirms that HE has a part in the show, too... as Coulson!
According to Gregg, "Agent Coulson" appears on the show as the principal of Peter Parker's high school... or, rather, Coulson is undercover at the school posing as the principal but actually acting as a S.H.I.E.L.D. "handler" keeping tabs on various super-powered teenagers in attendance. Heh.
Clever fanboy gag, to be sure, but is that all it'll be? No, Marvel (probably) can't loophole Spidey into "Avengers 2" by claiming that he's "Ultimate" and therefore a different character; but can anyone imagine Marvel/Disney, who've already pushed all their chips and then some onto the shared-universe gambit, NOT dropping even more slivers of reference and/or callbacks to "Avengers" or other films and declaring this series part of the "canon?" It'd be remarkably easy to do, an IronMan/Cap/whoever walk-on here, a line about "that time Loki showed up" there, and it'd likely pay big dividends as fans of the films tune in to hunt for clues as to who (or what) else might be showing up in the future.
I think that'd be kind of cool, so long as they don't overdo it, and I bet the younger fans it's aimed at who may only just be getting into the movies would get a real charge out of it. I remember watching the "Ghostbusters" cartoons as a kid and getting a big kick out of every time they offhandedly mentioned Gozer.
Oh, incidentally: In the same interview, Gregg jokingly "reveals" The Skrulls as the other big-bad of "Avengers"... only to immediately walk it back and instead claim he meant The Kree. Which makes me wonder... is he a fan, or are The Kree actually in there somewhere and thats how he knows them?
As a sidebar... I really think people underappreciate just what Gregg brings to the movies. He gives a great deadpan "suit" reading of his dialogue, and I think having a guy around who A.) moves between films without needing an explanation why other than "government agents get around" and B.) always appears somewhat "level" about it - as though reaffirming that the Marvel Universe is so big and strange that even THIS mid-level field operative has seen enough to not be all that "fazed" by Viking Gods and aliens or whatever - is a major part of why this should-not-work continuity experiment is actually working.
Thinking back on it, I really wish he'd been around to liven-up some of the dryer expository scenes in "Hulk;" and the fact that we only see him break his disaffected rigidity ONCE, when he finds a Captain America shield among the junk pile in "Iron Man 2," now feels like kind of a big 'this is how important the legend of THAT guy is - even Coulson is impressed' moment when you see it after having seen Cap's movie.
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