Remember Next Goal Wins, the Taika Watiti-directed sports drama, based on the same-titled documentary from 2014, about Dutch-American football coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) turning the low-rated American Samoa national team into groovers and hot-shots?

Principal photography began in November 2019 (a year before the Trump-Biden election) and wrapped in January 2020 (ten months before same). Then the pandemic hit in March and the train ground to a halt. Then along came 2021 and the glorious vaccines, and the train still didn’t move. It now appears that Next Goal Wins will open sometime in ’22, probably in the late winter or spring.

The only films that Searchlight has coming out this year are Michael Showalter‘s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch and Guillermo del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley.

Next Goal Wins costars Elisabeth Moss and…uhm, Armie Hammer.

I like a good come-from-behind sports film as much as the next guy. What’s the problem?