The upcoming "Avengers: Age of Ultron" is creating a tremendous stir after footage was showcased at Comic-Con this past weekend.

The first installment in the franchise had a total of six major Marvel Superheroes including Iron Man, the Hulk, Hawkeye, Thor, Captain America and Black Widow. That does't include other major characters like Phil Coulson and Nick Fury or the film's prominent villain Loki.

The cast has already been expanded tremendously for the new installment with Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch as the most prominent additions.

In many ways this film encapsulates what franchises in Hollywood have turned into. More is better until either the audience becomes tired with it (see Spider-Man and Transformers) or the quality simply does not hold up because one character gets the short end of the stick.

One solution is killing off a major character in order to cut down on the cast list and thus give other characters some screen time. Marvel has not shown a willingness to go through with this kind of sacrifice. In the first Avengers, Coulson was killed off only to be revived for the company's big TV show "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." In the most recent Captain America film, Nick Fury was "dead" for half of the film only to make a heroic comeback with the stakes at their highest.

But conversely, director Joss Whedon has a habit of killing beloved characters in his movies, so it cannot be ruled out completely.

There are certainly some top candidates that could suffer some sort of "death" in the new movie. But one of the ones that is likely to be ruled out completely is Iron Man, as actor Robert Downey Jr. hinted that he could return for a fourth installment in the "Iron Man" franchise.

"It's down to Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios president] and Ike [Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel Entertainment] and Disney to come to us with what the proposal is, and that's on us to agree or disagree," Downey Jr. said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly about returning to the franchise. "When things are going great, there's a lot of agreement."

Downey Jr. previously stated that he was hoping to move on from the franchise and Feige stated that he envisioned other actors donning the iron suit. This would have made Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark the ideal candidate to kill off in the movie. But alas, he is probably not the prime candidate at the moment.

So then who could be the victim in the upcoming "Avengers" film? Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver seem like longshots, considering they were just added to the roster. Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow is likely off the list since there are rumors of a Black Widows solo film and Johansson has proven to be a huge box office draw.

The Hulk has not had a solo film since 2008, but there are also expectations that he will get his own movie to star in sooner rather than later. Thor and Captain America also have their own stand-alone threequels planned, so they will probably survive this latest Avengers installment.

That leaves Hawkeye as the best candidate for death. His character was easily the least memorable in the first Avengers movie, and actor Jeremy Renner bemoaned that lack of depth in interviews. Whedon has stated that he will give the character greater importance in this upcoming installment, but there are a number of other factors that make him the perfect character to kill off. There are no solo films for the character to star in. Furthermore actor Jeremy Renner is busy with other major franchise films in coming years. He is slated to star in "Mission: Impossible 5" and the next "Bourne" movie; both films are slated for release by 2016. And there will probably be more of them thereafter.

Which superhero do you think could get killed off in "Avengers: Age of Ultron?" Comment and vote in our poll.

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