An interesting tidbit of information I found though I will be the first to say that I don’t know how reliable it truly is as one of sources of information is IMDB.com.
In an article by a Worstpreviews.com Staff member titled “First Look at the Skrulls in The Avengers” the writer talks about Avengers video game footage very similar to the footage reported by DCMarvelFreshman a couple of days ago, for whatever reason I can’t watch the footage so the comparison is coming from description of the footage. Towards the end of the article the writer is quoted as writing, “And since Fox may actually own the rights to the Skrulls, this may be a way to avoid any legal action.”
Making the statement that Fox may own the rights is probably due to Fox owning the rights to the Fantastic Four since Skrulls have always been associated with the Fantastic Four more than any other group or individual within Marvel pantheon. The second part of the statement talks about how the Skrulls in the Avengers movie may be referred to as (and I’m guessing physically resemble) Chitauri which is what the Skrulls are known as in the Ultimate universe and provides Marvel Studios a way with having Skrulls in the movie without actually calling them Skrulls.
In addition, IMDB.com has Colbie Smulders listed as playing both Maria Hill and Anelle, who is a Skrull princess from the comics with a first appearance in Fantastic Four #37.
I did an investigation into whether or not Fox owns the rights to Skrulls and the most conclusive evidence I found for either side of the case is a post on a superherohype.com board about some random guy who asked Kevin Feige back in 2009 if the Avengers were going to battle Skrulls to which Feige replied, “We do own them.” The author of the post then went on to say that after further digging it was discovered that Marvel Studios owns the rights to the Skrulls but Fox owns Super-Skrull. No reference to support this is made so the only evidence that Marvel Studios owns the rights is with what Feige said.
Personally, I hope Feige is telling the truth and Marvel Studios does have the rights to the Skrull race because it would be much cooler to see them than to have the Avengers fight the Chitauri. With all of the photos that have been released with Thor and Cap fighting back-to-back against a motion capture enemy it will be easy to do either Skrull or Chitauri so I guess we will have to wait for confirmation from someone who actually knows what is going on to see who it is going to be.
The link for the Worstpreviews.com article:
http://worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=22743&count=0#ixzz1WbqoV9qG
Link for the Superherohype.com board:
http://forums.superherohype.com/showthread.php?t=327541