Natalie Portman only had to meet with Taika Waititi once to officially sign on for Thor: Love and Thunder. Marvel Studios has a lot to celebrate at the moment. During the 2019 Comic-Con panel, Kevin Feige announced to the enthusiastic crowd that Avengers: Endgame had become the highest grossing movie of all time before giving a sneak peek into what the MCU's Phase 4 is going to look like. One of the bigger reveals came when Feige introduced Taika Waititi to the stage to announce Thor: Love and Thunder.

Since the announcements were made, Kevin Feige and the rest of the Marvel Studios crew have been answering questions about the future. Thor: Love and Thunder will feature the return of Natalie Portman's Jane Foster, but she will be taking on the identity of Mighty Thor in the highly anticipated sequel. But, how was Marvel Studios able to convince Portman to return after all of this time? Feige explains.

"We love the story -- it's one of the best comic runs recently. (Director Taika Waititi) would flip through and read that run while he was doing Ragnarok. And I think when he agreed to come back and do another Thor, he was like, 'How do we--?' This is a very big movie that'll be folding in a lot of elements. That is a huge important part of it. He pitched it to us, and we were totally in. We loved it. We'd been in touch with Natalie. She's part of the MCU family and we put she and Taika together. It took one meeting and she agreed to do it."

Taika Waititi was the right person at the right time to direct Thor: Ragnarok and it seems obvious he'd be the one to get Natalie Portman back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If it weren't for Waititi, Chris Hemsworth probably would not have signed on to do any more Thor after Endgame. The actor was over playing The God of Thunder before he started collaborating with Waititi, who asked for the cast to improv while shooting. This gave us a much more relaxed and confident version of the character with a humorous side.

Natalie Portman will more than likely be able to throw as much input as she wants into making Mighty Thor her own. She's going to be taking on a rather large role from one of the more popular stories from the comics, but it will be drastically different from the source material, thanks to Taika Waititi. Plus, Portman will be able to play off of her co-stars, which is probably why Ragnarok worked so well, since the cast chemistry was all in place.

It was just revealed that Thor: Love and Thunder will head back to Australia to begin shooting in August 2020. From there, the movie will hit theaters in November 2021 and will, at this time, close out the MCU's Phase 4. As Kevin Feige has said, things could change between now and then in terms of what gets put out, but the Thor sequel will more than likely keep its release date unless something out of the ordinary goes down. You can check out the rest of the interview with Kevin Feige over at CNN.