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It sounds as though Taika Waititi never intended to be part of any Marvel project at all. The director, in his delightfully tongue-in-cheek manor, shared that the only reason he took on Thor: Ragnarok was because he was "poor" and needed to feed his two children.
During an episode of The Smartless Podcast, the What We Do In The Shadows creator expressed his reluctance to take on his first Thor movie, "You know what? I had no interest in doing one of those films," Waititi said laughingly. "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.'"
The filmmaker explained that before embarking on the Thor sequel, he never had any interest in the films, adding that at the time it was probably the least popular Marvel franchise. "I never read Thor comics as a kid." he continued. "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, all 18 pages, or however long they are and I was still baffled by this character."
Later in the podcast, Waititi added that he took Marvel reaching out to him as a sign the studio didn't know where to take the franchise next, seemingly referring to the fact the first two movies were directed by different people – the first by A Haunting in Venice’s Kenneth Branagh and Thor: The Dark World by Alan Taylor. "I thought, 'Well, they’ve called me in, this is really the bottom of the barrel,'" he laughed.
Despite the director only joining the project for the cash, Waititi went on to write and direct the franchise’s fourth installment, Thor: Love and Thunder too. However, he has ruled himself out of a fifth movie to focus on his upcoming projects including his mysterious Star Wars endeavor. Next up for Waititi is his sports flick Next Goal Wins which will hit UK cinemas on December 26.
