Film

Get Your Tank Tops Ready: Taika Waititi Is Gonna Make A ‘Flash Gordon’ Movie

The most kitsch sci-fi property in town and one of the most kitsch filmmakers currently working? Count us in.

Taika Waititi -- Flash Gordon

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As you are probably well aware, given the entire world is in Taika-watch, Taika Waititi is having something of a moment.

A mere six years ago, he was a well-liked New Zealander making delightfully low-key comedy-dramas about young men coming of age in a hostile, strange world. Flash forward to his post-Thor: Ragnarok career and Waititi is being heralded as one of the freshest new voices in Hollywood.

Surely a lot of that comes down to the way he handled Ragnarok itself, producing a fun, funny technicolour explosion of a superhero movie. But you’ve gotta imagine a lot of it also comes down to the way he handled making Ragnarok. It is a skill in itself, producing a massive, Hollywood movie that satisfies your own artistic urges without pissing off the studio brass — after all, a lot of very famous directors have failed that tight-rope walk.

Josh Trank turned in a Fantastic Four movie that the studio gutted, kicking him off reshoots; Edgar Wright had such a hard time with Marvel boss Kevin Feige that he walked off Ant Man completely; and before she found success with DC, Patty Jenkins had a disastrous time almost making Thor: The Dark World.

So yep, looks like studios are all in on Waititi as the man they turn to in order to get their big, strange genre projects made — he’s already helming his own adaptation of the beloved sci-fi classic Akira, and now he’s been tipped to have some involvement in a Flash Gordon animated film.

In terms of the latter project, whether he’s going to direct, write, both or neither, is not clear — the whole thing is still totally up in the air. It’s not the first news we’ve gotten about a Flash Gordon film recently either: for a while, Julius Avery, the Australian director behind Overlord was touted to be working on a live-action adaptation.

But, though Avery is clearly a skilled craftsman, it seems very clear that Waititi is the perfect person for this job. After all, the original Flash Gordon is a camp classic, full of tank tops and creepy villains and space opera nonsense. What more could you possibly ask for from a Waititi project?