Taika Waititi is keeping busy. He’s working the awards circuit for his latest feature, Jojo Rabbit, and also at work on a small sports dramedy Next Goal Wins starring Michael Fassbender. However, on the horizon he’s returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Thor: Love and Thunder, which will not only bring back Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, but also have her as a new God of Thunder. Based on what we saw from Thor: Ragnarok, it should be a lot of fun!

Back in July, we reported that Thor: Love and Thunder (along with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) was set to film in Australia. Thor: Love and Thunder would start filming in March 2020 ahead of its November 5, 2021 release date. However, at an event for the BAFTAs, Waititi revealed that they plan to start pre-production in April so that they can start filming on Love and Thunder by August:

That’s a little surprising since Shang-Chi is also supposed to be filming in August. This might mean that the projects are filming simultaneously or that they swapped production dates based on their various needs (Shang-Chi doesn’t arrive until February 2021, so even if it started filming in March 2020, it would be a slightly hectic but not unmanageable production).

Despite the move from March to August, I doubt this will affect Marvel’s release calendar. The studio holds its dates pretty closely since the MCU is basically one big TV show. If you start jumbling things up, then certain plot points may not connect or may get revealed too early. But even if Love and Thunder starts filming in August, I doubt it will have any difficulty making its November 2021 release date, especially since Waititi is familiar with how the Marvel machine operates.