The last time we saw Taika Waititi and Rita Ora was at the Met Gala, but they are now back in Sydney, Australia, which is more or less their home base lately (Rita is a coach on The Voice Australia). Taika and Rita are not exactly a low-key couple—here they are both mugging for the cameras yesterday—but they are one of those celebrity couples that continually surprises me. Not just that they got together or are still together, but how well they fit together. They genuinely seem like a fun couple. Like maybe it’s a lot, but I bet they’re fun at a party.
We will have more opportunities to witness them on red carpets again later this year, when Taika does press for Next Goal Wins this fall. I have also not given up hope on Our Flag Means Death’s second season premiering this year. They wrapped production at the end of 2022, so it’s feasible we could get the next season before year end. And Taika reteamed with his What We Do in the Shadows collaborator, Jemaine Clement, for an adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, this time as a miniseries starring Lisa Kudrow. That production wrapped earlier this year, so at some point, we’re going to get a glut of new Taika stuff, never mind that he also has the television adaptation of Interior Chinatown coming at some point. Taika stays busy.
Too busy for Star Wars? He supposedly intends to direct a Star Wars feature next year, though he’s also in talks to direct an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun (a cover we debuted here on the site), as per his recent profile in The Hollywood Reporter. With all this stuff going on, and the way he talks about his Star War in THR, like he’s still figuring out the basic story, I am very curious to see if he actually gets that into production next year. Also, in that THR profile, they mention that Robert Pattinson introduced Taika and Rita. This is now all I’m thinking about. Imagine that dinner party?!