Chris Hemsworth on Thor: Love and Thunder Being “Put on Hold” by Coronavirus Shutdowns

Extraction star Chris Hemsworth is quarantined with his family in Australia, where Thor: Love and Thunder was preparing for an August shooting start before work on writer-director Taika Waititi‘s Thor: Ragnarok followup was “put on hold” amid the coronavirus crisis. The Marvel Studios movie reuniting Hemsworth with two-time Thor star Natalie Portman was planned to open November 5, 2021, before a reshuffling of Marvel’s Phase 4 slate pushed the fourquel to February 2022. Thor: Love and Thunder will now open February 11, 2022, after being moved up one week when Sony and Marvel’s co-production of the untitled Spider-Man: Far From Home sequel shifted from July 2021 to November of that year.

“It’s beautiful. I’m thankful being in a quiet little coastal town,” Hemsworth told Extra over video chat from Australia. “Supposed to shoot Thor in a few months, and that’s sort of been put on hold, but that was gonna be in Australia. So I was gonna be in Oz for a while, but now it’s just to be home with the kids.”

Plot details remain under wraps, but Hemsworth recently told The Inquirer the film has “one of the best” scripts he’s read “in years,” adding: “It’s Taika at his most extreme, and at his best. If the version I read is the one we get running with, it’s going to be pretty insane.”

Portman’s Jane Foster will be endowed with the power of the mighty Thor when she takes part in what Waititi has described as a “bigger, bolder and brighter” adventure film even more out-there than Ragnarok, which reinvigorated the Thor franchise launched in 2011.

“The next Thor film I’m doing, basically, we’re sort of launching ourselves again on this adventure film, really. That was the thing really that I loved about doing Ragnarok, it felt like we were just putting Thor on a really cool adventure,” Waititi told Entertainment Weekly late last year. “There’s always like new things to see and do, and this one, I think we’re gonna double down a lot on that and have it bigger, bolder and brighter. There’s just gonna be some really crazy stuff in the film.”

Former Batman star Christian Bale is expected to portray a villain in the film, which also brings back Ragnarok and Avengers: Endgame‘s Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson). Waititi will also reprise his role as Thor’s easygoing Kronan buddy Korg.

Thor: Love and Thunder now opens February 11, 2022.