Thor: Love and Thunder New Production Date Revealed

If all goes to plan, Thor: Love and Thunder will start production shortly after the first of the year. In a recent sit-down with tennis legend Serena Williams, Love and Thunder star Natalie Portman confirms she's been using quarantine-related delays to "get jacked" and "carbo-load," all in anticipation of filming at the early part of next year.

"Very excited," Portman told her new business partner about her thoughts on the sequel. The two had been talking about the new professional women's soccer team they're bringing to Los Angeles before Portmand added, "We're shooting in Australia at the beginning of next year."

Portman will be reprising her role as Jane Foster, a character she played in both Thor and Thor: The Dark World. While we know Foster will be transformed into the Mighty Thor — a nod to Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic's popular comic series of the same name — little else has been revealed about the movie. Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi previously suggested it was going to be "insane" and "romantic."

"I think it's going to be really good," Waititi teased. "We've finished, we've been writing the script off and on for over a year and I'm just, actually this week, doing another pass on it. It is so insane and also very romantic. I'm into romances now. I just want to make a romance. I want to make something that I've never done or never cared for. I would like to attack something like that."

In a separate interview, the filmmaker said the production shutdown was allowing him to refine the script of the movie, one which he says will make Thor: Ragnarok look "safe."

"No, I can't. I can't at all," Waititi responded when asked whether not he could share any Love and Thunder secrets. "But the other thing is, there are a few positive things I can take away [from the Covid-19 crisis]. One of them is that a lot of these films, and films in general, are rushed, or you don't have as much time as you'd want to have on the script and things like that.

"We're still writing Love And Thunder, and I think it's good to just keep writing, and then you know, we'll have a really, really good script. And with writing, especially, you should use as much of that time as possible to get your story right, because you never really get it later on. Film is an industry where you're always complaining about not having enough time. I think, right now, we've given ourselves a huge amount of time to work on all sort of things, so we may as well use it."

Thor: Love and Thunder is currently set for release on February 11, 2022.