Marvel is continuing to find a home for its productions in Australia. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings started production down under earlier this year and now, it appears Thor: Love and Thunder will be filming before long at all. Tuesday morning, Daily Mail released photographs of Natalie Portman and her family arriving in a private jet at a local Sydney airport.
Though Portman could be in Sydney for a number of reasons, Australian officials have confirmed they would giving Marvel Studios tax credits for Shang-Chi and an additional movie. Connecting the dots from there, Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi both lobbied to film Thor: Ragnarok in the country. After the merger between Disney and Fox closed last year, Disney now owns Fox Studios Australia, the southern hemisphere’s largest group of sound stages and filming locations.
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With the exception of Spider-Man 3 — which is technically Sony’s movie to set up production on — Love and Thunder is next up on the release schedule for Marvel Studios, in terms of movies having to start prinicpal photograph in order to meet a release date.
“[Taika] would flip through and read that run [Jason Aaron’s The Mighty Thor] while he was doing Ragnarok,” Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige said of the movie last year. “And I think when he agreed to come back and do another Thor, he was like, ‘How do we–?’ This is a very big movie that’ll be folding in a lot of elements. That is a hugely important part of it. He pitched it to us, and we were totally in. We loved it. We’d been in touch with Natalie. She’s part of the MCU family and we put she and Taika together. It took one meeting and she agreed to do it.”
Portman is set to return as Jane Foster for the first time since Thor: The Dark World. Confirmed last year at San Diego Comic-Con, Portman’s Foster will turn into the Mighty Thor in Love and Thunder, the main protagonist of Aaron’s run.
Thor: Love and Thunder is currently set for release on February 11, 2022.
What surprises do you hope are in store for the fourth Thor? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting up our writer @AdamBarnhardt on Twitter to chat all things MCU!
