Filmmaker Taika Waititi has confirmed that his Samoan soccer movie “Next Goal Wins,” starring Michael Fassbender, Elisabeth Moss, Rhys Darby and Will Arnett, looks to be finally coming out.
Speaking with Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men awards podcast, Waititi says the film was shot just before the pandemic, and has been sitting on a shelf for some time due to both world circumstances and his own hectic schedule:
“I was doing Thor, I was also editing my soccer movie that everyone forgot about – including myself. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s right, I was making a soccer movie,’ and there was a year where I didn’t even watch that film and it just sat on ice.”
While Waititi didn’t go into reasons for the shelving, one likely issue was that the movie had Armie Hammer in the cast in a supporting role. His role was recast and scenes were reshot with Arnett taking over that character.
Another is the distributors likely want a theatrical release for this. Waititi says of the movie: “it’s finished and it’s good, we’ve been testing it and people love the film”.
Footage from the film was screened at CinemaCon in Europe recently and reportedly went over very well with the crowd. Searchlight holds distribution rights and is expected to set a release date for the film sometime soon.
