{"id":49768,"date":"2026-04-29T20:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T20:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/thor-director-kenneth-branagh-had-a-very-different-idea-for-a-sequel\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T20:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T20:51:11","slug":"thor-director-kenneth-branagh-had-a-very-different-idea-for-a-sequel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/thor-director-kenneth-branagh-had-a-very-different-idea-for-a-sequel\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Thor&#8217; director Kenneth Branagh had a very different idea for a sequel"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69d63287cc468aeec524cd25?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Kenneth Branagh looking into a camera viewfinder on the seet of Thor\"\/><figcaption>Kenneth Branagh on the set of &quot;Thor.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Marvel Studios<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>&quot;Thor&quot; director Kenneth Branagh declined to direct a sequel. He still has ideas for how he&#039;d tackle one.<\/li>\n<li>He told BI his treatment would be similar to &quot;Logan,&quot; James Mangold&#039;s moody take on Wolverine.<\/li>\n<li>&quot;Part of me would love to finish my relationship with that character,&quot; Branagh told BI of Thor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When Kenneth Branagh was pitching himself to direct the first &quot;Thor&quot; movie in 2008, he envisioned a story with gravitas. After spending years forging a reputation as a skilled adaptor of William Shakespeare&#039;s works, writing, directing, and starring in both 1989&#039;s &quot;Henry V&quot; and 1996&#039;s &quot;Hamlet,&quot; he saw plenty of Shakespearean qualities in the story of the God of Thunder: generations-old mythology, a hero who must learn to be a leader, and plenty of family turmoil.<\/p>\n<p>Branagh&#039;s resulting adaptation, 2011&#039;s &quot;Thor,&quot; would go on to gross $449 million at the worldwide box office and set the stage for Marvel&#039;s dominance of the decade to come. But the &quot;Thor&quot; movie franchise would truly hit its stride when director Taika Waititi took the reins with 2017&#039;s &quot;Thor: Ragnarok.&quot; The film, which represented a shift to a more humorous tone, became the biggest earner in the franchise, taking in over $855 million at the worldwide box office.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69d632c81a512d0a63e736fe?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Tom Hiddleston as Loki standing next to Chris Hemsworth as Thor in Thor movie\"\/><figcaption>Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth in &quot;Thor.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Marvel Studios<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Branagh, who spoke to Business Insider to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the release of &quot;Thor,&quot; has seen Waititi&#039;s sequels \u2014 which also include 2022&#039;s &quot;Thor: Love and Thunder&quot; \u2014 and called them &quot;amazing films.&quot; Still, he wonders what could have been if he hadn&#039;t declined to continue on with the franchise.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Part of me would love to finish my relationship with that character,&quot; Branagh said, revealing that Marvel wanted him to return for a &quot;Thor&quot; sequel, but after three years of working on &quot;Thor,&quot; he said he &quot;needed a break.&quot; 2013&#039;s &quot;Thor: The Dark World,&quot; was ultimately directed by Alan Taylor.<\/p>\n<p>Branagh told BI that if he took on a &quot;Thor&quot; sequel, it wouldn&#039;t have been very comedic.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I&#039;d always wanted to do more and indeed had a couple of ideas, more in the territory of James Mangold&#039;s brilliant &#039;Logan,&#039;&quot; Branagh said, referring to the hit R-rated 2017 release that delivered a more mature storyline for Hugh Jackman&#039;s Wolverine. &quot;I would love to see Chris Hemsworth and the others have their own individual final story that takes Thor into a glorious twilight.&quot;<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69f201af3b4f7c3af2b7b039?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Hugh Jackman on the ground in Logan movie\"\/><figcaption>Hugh Jackman in 2017&#039;s &quot;Logan.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>20th Century Fox<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>While Thor&#039;s story turned more comedic in Waititi&#039;s sequels, the tide seems to be shifting in what audiences want from the character.<\/p>\n<p>After the release of the fourth movie in the franchise, 2022&#039;s &quot;Thor: Love and Thunder,&quot; failed to best &quot;Ragnarok&quot; at the box office and received middling reviews from critics, Hemsworth admitted that the movie was &quot;too silly.&quot; Even Waititi acknowledged the desire to switch it up, telling Business Insider right after the movie opened that if he were to do a fifth movie, he would want a &quot;new take.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I would want something that feels unexpected when it comes to the story,&quot; he said. &quot;Like making just a $5 million movie with no fighting at all, just Thor on a road trip.&quot; (Months later, Waititi told BI he would not be involved in a fifth &quot;Thor&quot; movie.)<\/p>\n<p>Hemsworth revealed in February that after we see Thor in &quot;Avengers: Doomsday&quot; at the end of this year, Marvel has plans for another Thor movie.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69f200bf9244129ecb2f9380?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Chris Hemsworth in a white top in Thor Love and Thunder\"\/><figcaption>&quot;Thor: Love and Thunder.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Marvel Studios<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&quot;I was talking to Kevin [Feige] about it, and he said it&#039;s cool because the audience now expects dramatic turns with the character,&quot; Hemsworth said on the &quot;SmartLess&quot; podcast of his discussions with the Marvel Studios head about the future of Thor.<\/p>\n<p>Branagh, who also appears in the upcoming &quot;The Devil Wears Prada 2,&quot; said he&#039;s excited to see where Thor&#039;s story goes.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I have such a high regard for what Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston and all of them involved have done,&quot; he said. &quot;I think it would be something very beautiful to take those characters into their own particular sunset.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>So, how about coming back to direct the latest chapter in the &quot;Thor&quot; saga?<\/p>\n<p>&quot;That&#039;s a whole other question,&quot; Branagh said. &quot;They are so far deep into the future of the Marvel Universe that I&#039;m sure whatever plans they have for it are already kind of set.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kenneth Branagh on the set of &quot;Thor.&quot; Marvel Studios &quot;Thor&quot; director Kenneth Branagh declined to direct a sequel. He still has ideas for how he&#039;d tackle one. He told BI his treatment would be similar to &quot;Logan,&quot; James Mangold&#039;s moody take on Wolverine. &quot;Part of me would love to finish my relationship with that character,&quot; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}