Will Arnett taking over Armie Hammer’s role in Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins

While Armie Hammer’s going to be seen on the big-screen shortly thanks to his role in Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile, Deadline is reporting that another of the under-fire actor’s roles is being completely reshot. Before the controversy that made Hammer’s place in Hollywood tenuous at best, he was part of the cast of Taika Waititi’s soccer comedy, Next Goal Wins. The film was shot back in the fall of 2019, but extensive reshoots happened this month, with Will Arnett subbing for Hammer when the latter was “unavailable.”

Given how Hammer’s become such a controversial figure, one wonders if this is them allowing the actor to save face. Due to the allegations, he was famously forced to exit the Jennifer Lopez comedy Shotgun Wedding, the Starz series Gaslit and Paramount Plus’s big-budget making of The Godfather series.

Next Goal Wins also stars Michael Fassbender and Elizabeth Moss. The film is based on a true story, where a Dutch coach named Thomas Rongen was brought in to transform the infamously awful American Samoa football team into a top squad. The story was previously turned into a 2014 documentary of the same name.

While it’s strange that the reshoots never happened until nearly two years after principal photography ended, bear in mind, the film was initially shot just before the pandemic. Waititi’s also been busy shooting Marvel’s Thor: Love & Thunder. Next Goal Wins sounds like a throwback to lower-key Waititi movies like Boy and The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and I’m pretty eager to see it. Hammer probably would have been good in the role, but Arnett is a solid substitute.

Another interesting aspect of the film is that it stars Michael Fassbender, who’s been absent from the big screen for a while, with this marking his first starring role since X-Men: Dark Phoenix. He’s also got the big-screen version of Kung Fury and a lead role in David Fincher’s The Killer in the works for 2022, so this is likely going to be a big comeback year for him.

Are you excited to see Next Goal Wins?