Taika Waititi’s career making movies started later than most. He made his first short films in his late 20s, and he quickly picked up an Academy Award nomination. Waititi is halfway to joining the list of EGOT winners as he has an Oscar and a Grammy on his shelf. However, while promoting his latest movie, Thor: Love and Thunder, which he calls his craziest movie yet, Waititi made a dismissive comment about his Grammy win.
Taika Waititi has an Oscar, Grammy, and two Emmy nominations
Waititi started as a painter, but enjoyed success almost immediately when he shifted his attention to moviemaking. The short movie Two Cars, One Night, earned an Oscar nomination for best live-action short at the 2005 Academy Awards. Waititi’s major award nominations didn’t stop there.
He won an Academy Award in 2020 for best adapted screenplay for the anti-hate satire Jojo Rabbit. The movie garnered Waititi another nomination for best film (he produced and directed).
Waititi’s 2020 awards train didn’t stop at the Oscars. Jojo Rabbit garnered the New Zealand native a win at that year’s Grammys for best compilation soundtrack. (His partner, singer Rita Ora, has yet to earn a Grammy nomination).
In addition to the Oscar and Grammy in 2020, Waititi scored Emmy nominations the same year. He earned nods for Outstanding Character Voice-Over (for The Mandalorian) and Outstanding Comedy Series (for What We Do in the Shadows).
Waititi could potentially complete his EGOT feat, but he apparently doesn’t rate the Grammy too highly.
Waititi dismisses his Grammy award: ‘They are just giving those things away’ (but Rita Ora doesn’t have one)
Jojo Rabbit’s soundtrack contains a mixture of pop and orchestral music. Michael Giacchino, whose work appears in The Incredibles, Up, Inside Out, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, penned the score, but Waititi had a hand in choosing the other songs.
That was enough for Waititi to earn his first (and so far only) Grammy nomination. Still, he didn’t speak too highly of the award during a Wired Google auto-complete segment (via YouTube):
“They are just giving those things away. I got the Grammy for the best soundtrack for Jojo Rabbit, which is pretty much just getting a Grammy for making a playlist.”
Taika Waititi on his Grammy win
Waititi and Jojo Rabbit bested Frozen II, the Mr. Rodgers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Bill & Ted Face the Music, and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga in the category. Singer Rita Ora, Waititi’s partner, has yet to earn a Grammy nomination.
Waititi has his Oscar and a Grammy that doesn’t seem to elicit much excitement, and an Emmy could come for his work on any of his various TV projects (including The Mandalorian, Our Flag Means Death, and What We Do in the Shadows). A Tony might not come as easily, but time is on his side.
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What’s after ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ for Waititi?
Waititi wrote the screenplay for Love and Thunder, so his hands are all over the film. It follows Thor: Ragnorok, which was his Marvel Cinematic Universe directing debut (and which he had to lie to Marvel to get the job).
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Love and Thunder has the potential to be a blockbuster (Waititi directed five Oscar winners alongside Chris Hemsworth in the movie), but he might have some other major hits in the works.
His IMDb page shows The Incal, based on the graphic novel, in pre-production. There is also an untitled Star Wars project slated for 2025, but if that turns out to be his next project is unknown.
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