Last year, Taika Waititi’s “Next Goal Wins,” starring Michael Fassbender and Elisabeth Moss, was moved from April to a September 22nd release date. Final? Of course not.
This turned out to not be the last schedule change for Waititi’s film. It’s now been officially moved by Searchlight to November 17th. Does it actually exist? Will we ever see this movie? No trailer and just one measly image have been so far released.
This means that “Next Goal Wins” will be released almost four years after its production wrapped. Principal photography on the film began in November of 2019 and wrapped up in January 2020. It has been in a state of limbo ever since.
Delays had initially been caused due to Armie Hammer being in the movie. Hammer got #MeToo’ed after it had already been shot.
Will Arnett replaced Hammer on the Searchlight Pictures Soccer comedy. The situation was very similar to what was done to Kevin Spacey on “All the Money in the World,” the former had his scenes completely reshot with Christopher Plummer hired as his replacement.
That November 17th date means that “Next Goal Wins” will be released on the same opening weekend as “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”, Eli Roth “Thanksgiving” and “Trolls Band Together”.
Good luck, Taika.
Remember when, back in August, we learned “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” would be playing in only around 350 U.S. theaters, "maybe fewer"? Well, it's fewer. A lot fewer.