It sounds like Thor Love And Thunder director Taika Waititi wasn’t keen on the character before making Ragnarok.
The whole ‘one for them, one for me’ approach of creators in Hollywood isn’t exactly a new one. At the moment, however, it seems the directors of a few big-name franchises are becoming a bit more honest about which one’s which.
On the Smartless podcast, Taika Waititi revealed he only really accepted Kevin Feige’s call to helm the third Thor film because they offered to pay him lots of money. Quite reasonable, I reckon.
“You know what? I had no interest in doing one of those films,” Waititi said. “It wasn’t on my plan for my career as an auteur. But I was poor and I’d just had a second child, and I thought, ‘You know what, this would be a great opportunity to feed these children.’”
He continued, “And ‘Thor,’ let’s face it — it was probably the least popular franchise. I never read ‘Thor’ comics as a kid. That was the comic I’d pick up and be like ‘Ugh.’ And then I did some research on it, and I read one ‘Thor’ comic or 18 pages, or however long they are.”
Over the last few weeks, both Francis Lawrence and David Yates have been surprisingly candid about their experiences directing the final installments of their own franchise films, The Hunger Games and Harry Potter respectively.
For Waitit’s part, he sounds quite surprised they asked him to pitch on the project at all.
“I think there was no place left for them to go with that,” Waititi said of the Thor franchise after The Dark World. “I thought, ‘Well, they’ve called me in, this is really the bottom of the barrel.”
Speaking to Insider earlier this year, Waititi said he wouldn’t be returning to the franchise for another Thor film, instead choosing to focus on his upcoming Star Wars project and a Klara And The Sun adaptation. He did, however, suggest his relationship with the studio ended up being a happy one.
“I love Marvel, I love working with them. I love Chris [Hemsworth]. We’re in an open relationship and it’s like, if they want to see other people I’m happy for that. I’d still get back into bed with them one day.”
