Taika Waititi

While filming Thor: Ragnarok in Australia, Taika Waititi worked with Screen Australia to get internships for Indigenous talent. Shari Sebbens plays an Asgardian mother and Steven Oliver from Black Comedy also appears in the film.

Thor: Ragnarok was directed by Taika Waititi and written by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher L. Yost, and features a Stan Lee cameo. It was released in October 2017 on a budget of $180 million.

New Zealand actor Karl Urban plays Skurge, almost unrecognisable under the character's hair and with that voice, so much so that Oti didn't realise it was him.

The cast is led by James Rolleston, Te Aho Eketone-Whitu and Taika Waititi himself, who plays Boy's father Alamein, and Cliff Curtis is credited as a producer.

Taika wanted to portray Germany realistically as a vibrant, thriving place, a time of fashion and innovation, rather than with the grittiness of a typical war film, which shows in the costumes.

The film stars Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo, Thomasin McKenzie and Scarlett Johansson, with a supporting cast that includes Sam Rockwell, Alfie Allen and Stephen Merchant, who plays Deertz.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople was written and directed by Taika Waititi. Like Jojo Rabbit, it is based on a novel, in this case Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump.

The cast includes Sam Neill as Hec, alongside Julian Dennison and Rima Te Wiata, with Rachel House playing Paula from child services and Oscar Knightley playing Andy.

Taika Waititi cameos as the priest who gives the funeral sermon. He reportedly based it on a real funeral he went to, where a priest said something very similar.

Waititi has said that on his films he makes sure any locals interested in the film industry can come along for work experience or just sit on set and see how it's done, because he never had that opportunity as a kid.

Boy is based on Taika Waititi's short film Two Cars, One Night, which won a lot of awards and was nominated for an Academy Award for short film.

Taika Waititi is indigenous to New Zealand, of Maori descent, and is also Russian Jewish with some European background; the film is set in 1980s New Zealand.

In interviews Taika Waititi has talked about wanting to highlight childhood poverty and the high teenage suicide rates in New Zealand, and he speaks seriously about the issues uniquely facing Maori and Pacific youth.

Jojo Rabbit is adapted from Christine Leunens's novel Caging Skies. The book has no fictionalised Hitler character, so Jojo's imaginary Hitler was added for the film.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople was made in close proximity to Thor: Ragnarok, which came soon after it, and sits between the personal Boy and the globally massive Ragnarok in Taika Waititi's filmography.

In interviews Taika Waititi has talked about how, when you're young, there are so many creative possibilities, from creative writing to the arts, but from around age 11 schooling becomes very binary, all maths and science.

The spaceships in Thor: Ragnarok are named after Holden cars, the Australian brand, most famously the Commodore, the ship known for its orgies.

Rachel House plays Topaz, seen at the Grandmaster's right hand, who describes slaves as "prisoners with jobs" because the Grandmaster doesn't like the word. She also appears in Soul and in Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

In the play within the film, Thor is played by Luke Hemsworth, another of the Hemsworth brothers, and Matt Damon also appears in the play.

Pana Hema Taylor, who plays Juju in Boy, also appears in the series Spartacus, so viewers of that show may recognise him without immediately placing him.

In Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Ricky's remark about Kingy being a dick is a callback to Taika Waititi's 2010 film Boy.

Boy, written and directed by Taika Waititi, was released in January 2010 at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to win and be nominated for a lot of awards all across the world.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019. It had a budget of $14,000,000 and a worldwide gross of $90,300,000.

Jojo Rabbit won Best Adapted Screenplay at both the BAFTAs and the Oscars, making Taika Waititi an Oscar winner, and it was nominated for many other awards.

The film was released in January 2016 at the Sundance Film Festival. Boy had smashed New Zealand box office records, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople one-upped it.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople had an estimated budget of 2,500,000 US dollars and went on to a worldwide gross of $22,800,000.