Neil Gaiman once developed an animated Thor series for Marvel

Back when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still in development, Neil Gaiman was brought on board to develop an animated Thor series which would have led into the first movie.

The writer revealed this on Tumblr when a fan asked him if he’d like to work on Thor if Marvel asked.

“Long ago — around 2006 — I was asked to create a Thor animated cartoon, and I got all excited, and the brief was it had to be set before the Thor movie,” Gaiman said. “I did a deep Thor dive, reread everything Jack Kirby drew, came up with a whole story shape that ran a few seasons showing young Loki going from hero-worshipping his big brother to Going to the Bad, and then they told me I wasn’t actually allowed to have any of the characters at any point be different in any way from how they were in the Thor movie, so I said no thank you and stopped.“

An animated Thor series from Neil Gaiman sounds like fun, but if you weren’t going to let the man do what he does, it’s probably for the best that it never happened. The first Thor movie was released in 2011, followed by Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, and Thor: Love and Thunder. It remains to be seen if Marvel will move ahead with Thor 5, but it sounds like Taika Waititi won’t be involved. As for Chris Hemsworth, he’s said that he’s down for more, provided they can revamp the character once again. “I love the experience,” Hemsworth said. “I love the fact that I’ve been able to do something fairly different throughout the process. Thor 1 and 2 were their own thing, Thor 3 and 4 were a very different feel… and then even Avengers, the Lebowski Thor, the Infinity War Thor, due to different directors and I think mostly my own need to do something different. You know, I got sick of the character pretty quick every couple of years.“

As for Gaiman, his next project is the second season of The Sandman series for Netflix. The show started shooting the new season last summer but was forced to halt due to the Hollywood strikes before it resumed in the winter.