‘Thor 2’ Director Leaves, Replacement Down to Two Unlikely Choices

We totally missed the boat on reporting that Patty Jenkins (Monster) left the director’s chair for Thor 2 last week over “creative differences.”  Of course, Marvel had Thor 2 down on its calendar for November 15, 2013 for months, so it doesn’t have a ton of wiggle room in getting a new director for the Norse god’s next adventure.

So it’s no surprise that The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Marvel has already narrowed down its search to two candidates.  What is surprising, however, is how neither is known for directing action movies.  One of the choices is Alan Taylor, who hasn’t directed many films, but has directed episodes of HBO’s Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood, and The Sopranos and AMC’s Mad Men (as well as the pilot of The Playboy Club, but Taylor probably leaves that off his resume).  The other is Daniel Minahan, who hasn’t directed many films either but has extensive television directing credits, including episodes of Game of Thrones, True Blood, Six Feet Under, Deadwood and Grey’s Anatomy.

Now Kenneth Branagh, who directed Thor, isn’t exactly known for his action films either and still did a pretty good job, but it’s also possible that Taylor and Minahan are more so choices of Marvel’s Disney budget-era — the same budgetary guidelines that reportedly lead to Jon Favreau‘s exit from Iron Man 3.  I’m not saying Taylor and Minahan couldn’t do the job — either might end up making an excellent movie — but it is surprising that Marvel and Disney are willing to put their second biggest comic book franchise (after Iron Man) into the hands of less experienced film directors.  Then again, Jon Favreau wasn’t exactly the most experienced director either when he was picked to direct Iron Man.  So I’m going to just stop speculating and hope Marvel knows what its doing since its been doing it well so far.

The writer isn’t set in stone yet either.  The top choices include John Collee (Happy Feet, Master and Commander: Far Side of the World), Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan), and Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction).

What we do know is that Chris Hemsworth is set to reprise his role as the god of thunder and Samuel L. Jackson is sure to pop up… and that’s about it.