We’ve been waiting a while, but at long last we have a trailer and a release date for director Taika Waititi’s upcoming film. The knockabout based-on-real-events underdog sports comedy Next Goal Wins will hit cinemas on December 7.
Based on the 2014 documentary of the same name directed by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison, Next Goal Wins follows the fortunes of the American Samoan football team. Following a brutal 31-0 loss to Australia in 2001 that kicked off a long run of bad luck on the pitch, the Football Federation American Samoa hired maverick Dutch coach Thomas Rongen to whip the squad into shape in order to qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
In Taika’s version, Rongen is played by Michael Fassbender as a self-pitying drunk who needs a win as badly as the team he’s coaching. Luckily, he spends the film surrounded by a remarkably stacked supporting cast who will surely teach him some important life lessons: Elisabeth Moss, Oscar Kightley, Rhys Darby, Angus Sampson, Rachel House, David Fane, Beulah Koale, and Will Arnett. Arnett was a late addition to the ensemble, replacing disgraced actor Armie Hammer in reshoots that took place in 2021.
We’ve been waiting a while for Next Goal Wins. The film was actually shot in Hawaii in 2019—2020, which means over three years will have passed between production and release by the time it hits our screens.
To put that in perspective, Taika’s Marvel mega-blockbuster Thor: Love and Thunder was shot, cut, and released in the interim. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Next Goal Wins is what we euphemistically like to call “a troubled production.” There was that whole global pandemic thing that shuttered cinemas for a while there to take into consideration, and holding out for a theatrical release, even one as delayed as this, speaks to a certain confidence in the final product. We’ll find out for later this year.
