'Avengers' Marvel TV Show Spin-Off Revealed: It's SHIELD!

Are you ready for "The Avengers" on the small screen? Well, you're probably not going to get it. But you are going to get the next best thing: S.H.I.E.L.D. on your TV!

A while back, we learned that Disney/Marvel had locked in Joss Whedon for "The Avengers 2" as well as an unnamed television show based in the Marvel universe. Now that show has been revealed to be a live-action take on SHIELD, aka the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, aka the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, depending on which universe you're talking about.

Whedon will co-write and even possibly direct the television series (though likely he'll be busy with "Avengers 2" and whatever comes after it), which will focus on SHIELD and, presumably, some of the familiar characters from the movie.

That's where the questions arise: will this show tie in with the movie? If so, it pretty much has to have Nick Fury and Maria Hill as characters... you just can't have SHIELD without Fury, can you? And if those characters are in the show, will they be re-cast with new actors? Cobie Smulders isn't too much of a longshot to play Hill on TV, but Samuel L. Jackson might be a stretch.

And most importantly, with Agent Coulson be part of this party? We hope so. Keep your fingers crossed for a prequel setting.

Really, the most exciting thing about this is it gets Whedon back to TV, where he is perhaps at his best: any fan of "Firefly" can tell you that. But this time, he'll be writing for a show that will be backed by the network's parent company (the show will air on ABC), and should have little chance of early cancellation.

...we hope.