A few weeks ago, we learned that Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi would be returning to the MCU to direct Thor 4, which we later found out would be called Thor: Love and Thunder. It seemed possible that would be his next directing effort, but that won’t be the case. Before he gets started on the film that will conclude Marvel’s Phase 4 slate, Taika Waititi has another secret movie coming.
Taika Waititi has a new project lined up at Fox Searchlight, the specialty division of 20th Century Fox now owned by Marvel Studios parent company Disney and also the studio releasing the filmmaker’s upcoming satire Jojo Rabbit. According to Deadline, the project is Next Goal Wins, based on the 2014 British documentary of the same name from directors Mike Brett and Steve Jamison.
Next Goal Wins follows Dutch soccer coach Thomas Rongen as he attempts to turn the historically terrible American Samoa soccer team from perpetual losers into winners. The doc premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014 and went on to win the Best Documentary award at the British Independent Film Awards. Taika Waititi will adapt the doc into a feature script alongside Iain Morris.
The plan is for Next Goal Wins to shoot this fall before Taika Waititi dives back into the world of Marvel for Love and Thunder, for which he has already completed the script. You can check out the trailer for the Next Goal Wins documentary in the video below to see the story Taika will be working with.
Prior to the Thor 4 news, we thought that Taika Waititi’s next film following Jojo Rabbit would be the anime adaptation Akira at Warner Bros. Akira was supposed to shoot this fall, but unfortunately with Marvel wanting to get started on Thor: Love and Thunder early in 2020, the productions were too close together for Taika Waititi to realistically be able to do both.
So on the downside, Akira's stay in development hell gets extended once again, although Warner Bros. supposedly still wants Taika Waititi to circle back around to the project once he’s done Thor 4. But the silver lining is that we get not one, but two smaller movies from Taika Waititi in between his MCU outings, not to mention the episode of The Mandalorian he directed.
Next Goal Wins sounds like Cool Runnings with soccer and definitely seems to be a heartwarming and fun story that Taika Waititi can bring to new audiences with his own unique voice. Next up though is Jojo Rabbit, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.
If you won’t be in attendance at TIFF, Jojo Rabbit opens in theaters on October 18. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to keep track of all the exciting movies, big and small, headed your way this fall.
