Taika Waititi says he only agreed to direct Thor for the money: “I was poor”

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Taika Waititi confessed that his decision to accept directing Thor: Ragnarok for Marvel Studios was motivated purely by money.

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In an interview with the Smartless podcast, the filmmaker recalled that he was not in a good place when the studio made the proposal.

“I had no interest in doing a superhero movie. It wasn’t in my career plans, so to speak. But I was poor, and I had just had a second child. I thought, ‘You know what? This is a great opportunity to feed these children,'” he commented.

Waititi also said that he was never a fan of Thor comics, and that he continued that way when he tried to read them again after accepting the job at Marvel.

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“Let’s be honest: Thor is the least popular character out of all of these [original Avengers]. When I was a kid, if I saw a Thor comic, I thought, ‘Ew.’ And when I started researching the movie, I tried reading the comics again, and I didn’t get past 18 pages. I didn’t understand that character”, said the director.

Despite this, Waititi’s “Thor: Ragnarok” was a resounding success, grossing more than US$850 million at the global box office, receiving good reviews and reinvigorating the character within the MCU.

As a result, the director returned to “Thor: Love and Thunder” in 2021, which grossed US$760 million worldwide, but was not as well received by critics as Ragnarok.