Kenneth Branagh has spent 15 years thinking about what he left unfinished. The British filmmaker, who launched Chris Hemsworth’s Thor in Marvel’s 2011 original, told Business Insider he has developed ideas for a concluding chapter — one he envisions as a somber, character-driven finale modeled on James Mangold’s acclaimed 2017 film Logan.
“Part of me would love to finish my relationship with that character,” Branagh said. “I’d always wanted to do more and indeed had a couple of ideas, more in the territory of James Mangold’s brilliant Logan. I would love to see Chris Hemsworth and the others have their own individual final story that takes Thor into a glorious twilight.”
Branagh explained that Marvel had asked him to return for the sequel, but he declined. “Marvel shoots are intense. Marvel postproduction is more intense — wildly exciting but super intense,” he said, adding that he needed a break and that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was understanding. He later said he told Feige directly, “I don’t have it in me.”
The franchise passed through two more directors in his absence. Alan Taylor’s Thor: The Dark World arrived in 2013, before Taika Waititi reshaped the character entirely with Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). Waititi’s comedic, brightly colored approach earned massive box office returns — Ragnarok grossed roughly $854 million worldwide — but Love and Thunder drew considerable audience backlash for leaning too far into slapstick. Even Hemsworth acknowledged the miscalculation, admitting he “got caught up in the improv and the wackiness” and that the character became “a parody” of itself.
Waititi has confirmed he will not return for a fifth Thor installment. That opens the door for Branagh, whose pitch for a grounded, elegiac sendoff has gathered attention from fans and industry observers who see it as a course correction Marvel genuinely needs.
Hemsworth, for his part, has confirmed that he and Marvel Studios have discussed plans for Thor beyond this year’s Avengers: Doomsday, which opens December 18, 2026. On the Smartless podcast, he said they have “ideas to do something pretty unique again” and that he expects to return “a couple more times.”
Branagh, however, was candid about the limits of his own influence. “They are so far deep into the future of the Marvel Universe that I’m sure whatever plans they have for it are already kind of set,” he said. His wish, he made clear, is less a formal pitch than a heartfelt statement from the director who introduced the God of Thunder to the world — and who still believes that story deserves a proper ending.
