A Triple Dose Of Taika Is On The Way In August

Bobby Barker

There’s been a bit of a lull in the Taika-verse in the last couple of years. Aotearoa’s biggest entertainment star was absolutely red-hot at the back end of the last decade, hitting the big time after a stretch which saw him direct and star in a knock-out Thor sequel film, reprise that role in the biggest movie in a generation and win his first Oscar on the side just for good measure. The 2020’s have so far been much quieter (in large part, no doubt, due to Covid-related factors), with a voice-acting and directing credit for Disney’s The Mandalorian being his only real impact so far. That’s about to change, however, as August will mark Taika’s return to the big screen in not one, but two blockbuster features, as well as the release of his own original series.

First comes the much anticipated DCEU project The Suicide Squad (not to be confused with 2016’s Suicide Squad), which we covered in our latest edition of M2 Magazine. The film drops in New Zealand cinemas on the 5th August and Waititi’s role has been mysteriously kept under wraps by himself and director James Gunn, so it seems we will all have to wait and see when he pops up onto our screens in the theatre.

Then comes a brand new series co-conceived and written by Waititi and Native American filmmaker Sterlin Harjo titled Reservation Dogs. The project (title seemingly playing on the Quentin Tarantino classic, Reservoir Dogs), which will premiere on Disney+ on the 9th August, is a comedy series which will chronicle the misadventures of four indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma. Harjo has remarked that the series will draw on both of their experiences as indigenous people in Western countries, and will no doubt feature plenty of Waititi’s trademark snarky wit and earnest suburban storytelling.

Waititi’s other on-screen appearance is much less evasive, as it has been long known that Waititi would play a villainous game developer in the Shaun Levy directed action-comedy Free Guy. The trailer for Free Guy shows Waititi as Antoine, an eccentric man-child who is planning to pull the plug on his video game which hosts the film’s protagonist, video-game character Guy (played by Ryan Reynolds). This is the second time Waititi will share the screen with Reynolds, with the first all the way back in 2011 in Kiwi director Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern. The film drops on our shores on August 12th and rounds off a hectic two weeks for the Kiwi star.

It might not be a big enough fix to satisfy his most passionate fans, but this ‘Taika trifecta’ will have to last us until his next big project, Thor: Love and Thunder, drops sometime next year.

Top image credit: Gage Skidmore