Filmmaker Taika Waititi left a ton of surprises in 'Thor: Love and Thunder' on the editing room floor, including appearances by Lena Headey, Jeff Goldblum?and Peter Dinklage.
According to Variety, the latter two shot scenes in the film as their pre-existing Marvel characters the Grandmaster and Eitri respectively, while 'Game of Thrones' favourite Headey was set to make her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut. All of their scenes got deleted.
"I wrote the thing so when you cut anything it's a little bit of a challenge to yourself because you're like, 'Am I not that good? Should I have seen this coming?' But every film I've done I've probably cut the same amount out," Waititi recently told Insider.
"When you go into the edit you just never know. A scene on its own could be the funniest thing or most intriguing thing, but sometimes those things if you keep them in will just make the movie screech to a halt. So you have to do what's best for the film."
"And if you ask any of those actors who were cut out, Jeff Goldblum, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, they all understand how it works," the director continued. "They have been in the game long enough. But that's just the way I look at things."
Waititi would not reveal anything about the scenes in which Headey, Goldblum or Dinklage appeared, saying: "I'm not going to give you a moment because this is my way of telling you."
"I don't want people to see the deleted scenes because they're deleted for a reason: They aren't good enough. The scenes were not in the movie and that's it."
Headey's cut role in 'Thor: Love and Thunder' resulted in a $1.5 million lawsuit against her by her former UK agency Troika over unpaid commission fees.
Troika, which re-branded as YMU in 2020, claims that Headey owes the agency at least $500,000 equivalent to 7 per cent of her fee from her earnings on the Marvel movie. Headey disputes that Troika has any claim to a commission on Thor: Love and Thunder, which she says came about after director Waititi approached her directly.