Thor: Love and Thunder to Use the Same VFX Tech as The Mandalorian

September 11, 2020

According to /Film, Lucasfilm’s visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic a.k.a ILM is reportedly building a large-scale custom volume at Fox Studios Australia that will be used for the production of Taika Waititi’s highly-anticipated Thor: Love and Thunder. This kind of groundbreaking visual effects technology called The Volume was first seen in Disney+’s The Mandalorian which saw ILM make use of HD LED panels that duplicated the landscapes of different worlds.

ILM notes that the new VFX technology for the Chris Hemsworth-led sequel will be a much better version than the versions they’ve used in the Star Wars series. “By every measure, the new stages are vast improvements over the original ground-breaking LED volume developed for the first season of The Mandalorian in 2018. Physically, the new stages are larger, utilizing substantially more LED panels than ILM’s original stage and also offering both higher resolution and smooth wall to ceiling transitions – this directly results in better lighting on set as well as many more in-camera finals. ILM’s proprietary solutions for achieving groundbreaking fidelity on the LED walls at scale allows for higher color fidelity, higher scene complexity, and greater control and reliability.”

Thor: Love and Thunder will be directed by Waititi (Jojo Rabbit) on a script co-written by him and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Someone Great), which will be the followup to Waititi’s wildly successful 2017 sequel Thor: Ragnarok. Oscar-winner Natalie Portman is set to return as Jane and will now be wielding the mighty Mjolnir. Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson will also return as Thor and Valkyrie, respectively. Academy Award winner Christian Bale (The Dark Knight trilogy) will portray the main antagonist in the film. The female Thor storyline is based on Jason Aaron’s run on “The Mighty Thor” in which a cancer-stricken Jane Foster takes up the mantle and powers of Thor.

Thor and Valkyrie were last seen in this year’s highest-grossing film of all time Avengers: Endgame, with the god of thunder entrusting his responsibilities as the King of Asgard to Valkyrie as he joins the Guardians of the Galaxy on their next mission. According to Vin Diesel, the Guardians might also make an appearance in the fourth Thor film.

Originally set to debut on November 2021, Thor: Love and Thunder will now be arriving in theaters on March 25, 2022.