When an amateur photographer in Pennsylvania posted photos of military vehicles emblazoned with the S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division) logo sitting in a parking lot on his Facebook account, many decried the photos as fakes, citing an official Marvel Studios press release for The Avengers — the only Marvel Comics adaptation that Marvel Studios currently has in production — which listed filming locations in New Mexico, Ohio and New York, but not Pennsylvania.
We speculated that the trucks might have been been in Pennsylvania in anticipation of the arrival of a second unit, and now it appears our hunch was correct. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a "secondary" unit of The Avengers production will be filming "about an hour outside of Pittsburgh." No specific dates were given, but the Post-Gazette reported that the production will be filming "at the same time" as Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, which is using Pittsburgh as a double for Gotham City during filming which is slated to last from July 28th to Aug. 21st. Unfortunately for die-hard comic book fans who are already envisioning a meeting of Batman and the Avengers, the Pennsylvania shoot for The Avengers will be "without cast members."