Taika Waititi left a ton of surprises in “Thor: Love and Thunder” on the cutting room floor, including buzzy appearances by Lena Headey, Jeff Goldblum and Peter Dinklage. The latter two shot scenes in the film as their pre-existing Marvel characters the Grandmaster and Eitri, respectively, while “Game of Thrones” favorite 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 most funniest thing or 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, adding, “I’m not going to give you a moment because this is my way of telling you, like, people say, ‘I can’t wait for the deleted scenes with those actors.’ 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 U.K. agency Troika over unpaid commission fees. Troika, which re-branded as YMU in 2020, claims Headey owes the agency at least $500,000 — equivalent to 7% of her fee — for her earnings on the Marvel movie. Headey disputes that Troika has any claim to commission on “Thor: Love and Thunder,” which she says came about after director Waititi approached her directly.
“Thor: Love and Thunder” is now playing in theaters nationwide.