Thor: RagnarokdirectorTaika Waititiadmitted that he illegally downloaded movies to make his sizzle reel for the third installment of the franchise. The idea of Waititi telling an interviewer that he did it isn’t very surprising, since the director is very open about his practices; some of which are a little left of center. However, one can see his Marvel bosses being a little upset at the comment, especially sinceThor: Ragnarokleaked on torrent sites a full month earlier than its official home video release date.
Taika Waititi was asked how he got involved withThor: Ragnarokand mentioned that Marvel didn’t have a story yet. So, Waititi set out to find clips from movies that he thought would fit the tone of his vision in a sizzle reel to present to Marvel Studios. Without any prompting at all, the director simply says that heillegally downloadedthe clips for use in his presentation. He had this to say.
“I cut together little clips and shots, I basicallyillegally torrentedand, erm, you know, ripped clips from the Internet.”
Taika Waititi’s admission blurs some lines here since he was using the clips to present something that was not sold. But downloading the clips in the first place is very illegal, which he realized after he said it out loud and then joked that they should maybe cut that part from the interview. It’s not every day that you hear about thedirector of a Hollywood blockbuster moviesitting at home and illegally downloading movies through torrents, but for some reason, it just makes sense that it was Taika Waititi.
As previously mentioned, the news comes at a time whenThor: Ragnarokhas been leaked on to torrent sites. The movieleakeddue to some miscommunication between Vudu and Apple, which own iTunes, making the movie officially available for a very short time before the mistake was recognized. The official release date is February 20th with the Blu-ray edition coming out on March 6th, so this leak is really early. It’s not clear if Taika Waititi has illegally downloaded his own movie yet, but someone should probably ask him.
Thor: Ragnarokwas a good experience for all parties involved and it looks like Taika Waititi might be in talks for a possible Thor 4 in the near future. Chris Hemsworth and the director have talked about it, but nothing official has been announced by Marvel Studios at this time, which is quite understandable. Marvel is about to kick off its biggest year yet withBlack PantherandInfinity War, two of the most anticipated movies of 2018 and again withAvengers 4in 2019. While we wait on confirmation to see if Taika Waititi has illegally downloadedThor: Ragnarokyet, you can check out the rest of his interview over atCBC Radio.
