Variety just announced that Joe Johnston has just signed the deal to direct “First Avenger: Captain America,” from Marvel Studios. The pick of Johnston evolved from talks dating back nearly two years.

The producer of the film, Marvel’s Kevin Feige, is very excited.

“This is a guy who designed the vehicles for ‘Star Wars,’ who storyboarded the convoy action sequence for ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ ” Feige said. “From ‘Rocketeer’ to ‘October Sky’ to ‘The Wolfman,’ you can look at pieces of his movies and see how they lead to this one.”

After kicking off their Avengers film arc with Iron Man this past summer, Marvel is rocketing towards a “Thor” movie and an Iron Man Sequel before Captain America is set to debut on May 6, 2001. Later that year you can expect to see them all together in the very first Avengers movie.

“Captain America” will be a World War II-set movie, and the character will appear in the modern day-set “Avengers.” Executive producing on “Captain” are Louis D’Esposito, Stan Lee and Marvel Studios’ chairman David Maisel.

Along with work on the films mentioned above, Johnston’s credits also include: “Jurassic Park III” and “Hidalgo.”