Taika Waititi reveals which films he directed because of poorness

According to Taika Waititi, he first had "no interest" in helming Marvel's Thor: Ragnarok in 2017.

In an interview with Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes for the Smartless podcast on Monday, the director discussed how he came to be the director of two Thor films, including the superhero franchise's Thor: Love and Thunder in 2022.

“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 added, “And Thor, let’s face it — it was probably like the least popular franchise. I never read Thor comics when I was 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. I was still baffled by this character.”

During the conversation, Waititi said he feels like he was questioned to direct the Thor films because “there was no place left for them to go with that. I thought, ‘Well, if they’ve called me in, this is really the bottom of the barrel,'” adding that fans initially “hated that I … signed on for the first one.”

The director of Next Goal Wins made these remarks earlier this month telling Business Insider that he had no immediate intentions to return to the Thor franchise.