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Taika Waititi Talks THOR: RAGNAROK, Rey’s Parents, AKIRA, and WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS Sequel

We’re so excited to see Thor: Ragnarok we’re bursting at the seams like a pair of Bruce Banner’s pants when he gets angry, but today we found a way to help ease the pressure of having to wait for it hit theaters next week. How did we do that? Oh nothing big. We just had the film’s director Taika Waititi stop by Nerdist News Talks Back to tell us all about the movie.

….Oh yeah we did.

On today’s very special (mainly spoiler-free) episode, Waititi told Jessica Chobot and senior Nerdist editor Dan Casey how he’s handling the hype for one of the most anticipated Marvel movies ever, and why he wanted to make a fun, action-comedy Thor. And while the hilarious tone of the film definitely has Waititi’s signature touch—including lots of on-set improvisation—was there anything he wanted to include that didn’t make it in?

He also answered some viewer questions, like what challenges he faced trying to get his vision of the film to fit into the larger MCU, and if the tough New Zealand “Skux life” chose Thor or he chose it. But we also wanted to know if he thinks Korg (who he voices in the film) could get his own spin-off, how much of the movie was inspired by Walt Simonson’s Thor run (a lot), what it was like on set every day, and if the movie has any Infinity Stones. (We didn’t expect him to answer that one! It never hurts to ask!)

We also had some non-Ragnarok questions, including whether he now has the cache to get us another season of Flight of the Conchords which he worked on (a possible movie is being worked on!), the status of the sequel to What We Do in the Shadows (so far it just has a title: We’re Wolves), and the reports about his live-action Akira movie for Warner Bros. (which would adapt the books rather than the anime!) which, Waititi explained that though “they may be right,” so far they’ve just been discussions.

What does he thinks the next big fashion trend might be? We also asked what other movies he’d love to do for Disney. (A live-action Fantasia would be hard, but we say let the man try.)

But since he has now entered the top tier of big budget Hollywood directors, we fired off a whole slew of questions to test his movie knowledge…and maybe also to see if we could trip him up into giving us some big juicy Marvel spoilers—and even some DCEU and Star Wars spoilers…you never know.

When that didn’t work though (Marvel has really trained their people well—except Mark Ruffalo that is), we just straight up asked him to tell us some news nobody else has yet. (You have to tune in for that one, that’s what makes it cool.)

Today’s a perfect reminder why you should always tune in live with us when Nerdist News Talks Back airs every weekday at 1:00 p.m. PST on our YouTube and Alpha channels. But even if you missed today’s big show, you can still vote in today’s Monster Madness poll and help decide the best, baddest, big beast around!

You might have missed out on talking with Taika Waititi today, but you can still talk back to us about today’s shows, Thor: Ragnarok, and Taika Waititi in the comments below. We still have another week until the movie comes out (November 3rd), so being able to talk about the movie some more with you would really help us while we wait.

Images: Marvel

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