Christian Bale Took Up Thor 4 Despite Scheduling Conflicts. Here’s Why

Christian Bale, who is set to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the menacing villain Gorr the God Butcher on Thor: Love and Thunder, nearly turned down the Chris Hemsworth-led movie due to “potential scheduling conflicts”. He, however, decided to go through with it, following “marching orders” from his children Emmeline Bale and Joseph Bale to take up the Taika Waititi-directed fourth Thor​ film. Bale jokingly revealed that he didn’t have much of a choice, as his children refused to give him any options. In fact, they were so adamant about him working on Thor: Love and Thunder that they didn’t even take “I might [do it]” as an answer.

Bale told Entertainment Tonight: “We always sit down and make choices together, but this is one that I thought couldn’t happen. They corrected me on that and they said, ‘No, dad, you’re making this one.” And I said I might and they said, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ So I said ‘Ok’.”

Bale further revealed that he liked the script for Thor: Love and Thunder and Waititi’s description of Gorr the God Butcher. He told Screenrant: “It comes down to that, really. I just went, ‘Great!’ Loved the script, loved Taika’s description of the villain. ‘Let’s go do this.”

Besides Hemsworth and Bale, the Thor: Love and Thunder cast includes Natalie Portman as Thor’s astrophysicist ex-girlfriend Jane Foster/ Mighty Thor, Tessa Thompson as the king of New Asgard Valkyrie. Russell Crowe as the Olympian god Zeus, and Jaimie Alexander as Thor’s childhood friend Sif. Waititi appears as the Kronan Gladiator Korg. Additionally, Chris Pratt, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Vin Diesel, and Bradley Cooper reprise their respective roles from the Guardians of the Galaxy film series on the new MCU movie.

Thor: Love and Thunder is out July 8 in cinemas worldwide. In India, Thor: Love and Thunder will release a day earlier on July 7 in English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada.