Taika Waititi’s New Movie Delayed

Fan-favorite director Taika Waititi’s newest movie won’t be released for a little while. On Wednesday, Searchlight revealed that Next Goal Wins, which is directed and co-written by Waititi, will now be releasing in theaters on September 22, 2023. This is several months after the film’s previously-scheduled release date of April 21, 2023. This means that the film will now open alongside Expendables 4, which is scheduled for the same release date. Directed by Waititi, who co-wrote the script with Iain Morris, Next Goal Wins is based on Mike Brett and Steve Jamison’s 2014 documentary of the same name.

Next Goal Wins follows the true story of Dutch-American football coach Thomas Rongen is tasked with turning the American Samoa national team, considered one of the weakest football teams in the world, into an elite squad. The cast of Next Goal Wins includes Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, David Fane, Beulah Koale, Uli Latukefu, Rachel House, Kaimana, Rhys Darby, Will Arnett, and Elisabeth Moss.

What is Taika Waititi’s next movie?

In an interview last month, Waititi teased what drew him to telling the story of Next Goal Wins, teasing that it is “the ultimate underdog story.”

 “It’s the ultimate underdog story,” Waititi told Empire magazine. “It taking place in Polynesia is very important to me, because it’s my people. We stick together. It was like seeing myself up there, seeing my family up there, when I saw that documentary, which is so perfect in many ways. And to have a broader audiences have access to that story was one of my main goals. To bring our backyard to people, and to put brown faces on screen was a big deal for me. I just loved it.”  

Will Taika Waititi direct Thor 5?

Following the release of Thor: Love and Thunder earlier this year, there’s been the lingering question of whether or not a fifth Thor film could be a possibility. As Waititi has put it, he’s not entirely expecting to be creatively involved with a fifth film, if it were to be greenlit by Marvel Studios.

“I haven’t thought about it as part of a new trilogy, because every time I make a film, I think, ‘I’m never doing that again…’ because they’re just too hard,” Waititi explained to Fandango earlier this summer. “There’s any film and I’ve done it eight times now. Eight times I’ve said, ‘I think I’m just going to pack it in. I had a good run.’ And then sure enough get lured back in with a Yankee dollar. Lured back in by them cookies… and them Oscars.”