‘Sexiest Man Alive’ Chris Hemsworth has packed film slate ahead

People magazine’s newly crowned “Sexiest Man Alive” is also one of the busiest actors in Hollywood. Chris Hemsworth, the blond beefcake best known for playing a hammer-swinging Norse deity in Marvel’s “Thor” and “Avengers” movies, has no fewer than four films lined up for 2015.

The 31-year-old Australian actor will next be seen on the big screen in Michael Mann’s techno-thriller “Blackhat,” set for release Jan. 16 from Universal Pictures. Looking to tap into contemporary unease about the specter of cyber-terrorism, the movie finds Hemsworth playing a genius hacker serving a 15-year prison sentence who’s tapped by the feds to help take down a firewall-crashing villain.

In March, Hemsworth will go low-tech in the Ron Howard-directed maritime drama “In the Heart of the Sea.” Based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s nonfiction book of the same name, the Warner Bros. movie will tell the story of the Essex, a New England whaling ship assaulted by one of its very targets in the winter of 1820. The real-life disaster went on to inspire Herman Melville’s classic novel “Moby-Dick.”

Hemsworth will pick up his trusty hammer again to play Thor in the highly anticipated Marvel sequel “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” set for release May 1. For those living in a superhero-proof bunker, the film is to reunite the dysfunctional all-star team of Thor, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) and the rest in an effort to stop a megalomaniac android (James Spader).

Lest you think of him as nothing but a butt-kicking action hero, Hemsworth will also show off his comedic chops in Warner’s “Vacation,” a reboot of the “National Lampoon’s Vacation” franchise set for release Oct. 9. He’ll play the irritatingly successful brother-in-law of a grown-up Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms).

Further out, Hemsworth has been linked to Shane Black’s movie project based on the pulp hero “Doc Savage,” and he’s set to suit up for 2017’s “Thor: Ragnarok” and possibly more of Marvel’s “Phase 3” films.

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