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Taika Waititi is looking to move on from the criticisms over last summer’s Thor: Love and Thunder with his soccer themed movie Next Goal Wins and Searchlight Pictures has released the first trailer for the movie. Based on the documentary of the same name by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison, the movie stars Michael Fassbender as Thomas Rongen, a soccer coach with some rather unorthodox ways of training teams, who attempts to turn the American Samoa national team into champions following their 31-0 defeat in 2001. Check out the trailer below.
Alongside Fassbender, the movie also stars Elisabeth Moss, Will Arnett, Uli Latukefu, Rhys Darby, Oscar Kightley, Rachel House, Angus Sampson, Russell Satelle, Karim Benz and Chris Aloso, while Kaimana, a fa’afafine non-binary actor will take on the role of Jaiyah Saelua, the first non-binary player to take part in a World Cup qualifier match. Discussing why it was important to cast a non-binary actor in the role, Waititi told Variety:
“It was vital. There was no way we would have approached it in any other way.”
The production of Next Goal Wins has not been an easy road. The movie originally began filming back in 2019 and completed in January 2020, just ahead on the Covid pandemic. While that delayed the release of the film, something that hit a number of movies in the same way, over the course of the next year allegations of abuse made against Armie Hammer saw his role being taken over by Will Arnett, who reshot all of Hammers scenes.
Next Goal Wins Focusses On A True Underdog Story
Next Goal Wins could easily have told the well documented humiliating defeat of the American Samoan team by Australia, but that story was not really the interesting thing about the team, and Waititi clearly recognized that when deciding how to approach the story he wanted to tell.
For any soccer team, being crushed 31-0 would be enough to demoralize a group of players into simply giving up and never kicking a ball again. For the American Samoa team though, that defeat was actually where the story began. The film will show their determination to drag themselves up from being the worst team in the world – literally 203rd out of 203 teams – and win against real opposition, something they finally achieved a decade later in a 2011 match against Tonga.
Next Goal Wins may not have the makings of a massive blockbuster, but it can certainly make a mark among some of the most memorable sports movies out there. Michael Fassbender and Elisabeth Moss are more than capable of bringing their A-game to their performance, and when he is on form Waititi can bring out the best in his casts. Hopefully, Waititi will be able to bring a balance to Next Goal Wins that seemed to be missing from last year’s Thor: Love & Thunder, and will put himself on a good footing to take on his expected foray into the world of Star Wars in the near future.
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