Taika Waititi’s next movie may be his most unexpected yet. The filmmaker behind Thor: Ragnarok has unveiled the first look at Klara and the Sun, his adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s bestselling 2021 novel.
Waititi tells Vanity Fair this was one of the hardest things he has tried to adapt once he started unpacking its themes of loneliness, love, and what it even means to be human.
A retro future where the internet vanished entirely
The story of Klara and the Sun is set in a future that feels deliberately stripped back. Waititi designed a world with a 1960s-inspired look, where the internet no longer exists for everyday use.
In this future, some children are genetically engineered for academic advantages. A mother played by Amy Adams (Cape Fear) buys an Artificial Friend named Klara to keep her ill daughter Josie company.
Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) plays Klara, with Mia Tharia as Josie, and Natasha Lyonne and Steve Buscemi rounding out the cast. Waititi says he wanted to subtly suggest humanity broke something and lost access to that technology altogether.
Jenna Ortega swaps her usual brooding for pure sunshine
Waititi says he wanted someone young and cool for the role, and he found exactly that in Ortega. It is a fun change of pace for her, since she has spent most of her career playing darker, broody characters like Wednesday Addams.
This time around, she gets to play the opposite with a hopeful, childlike android discovering humanity with wide-eyed curiosity. Ortega says she studied her young nieces and nephews to capture that same open, forgiving way of seeing the world.
Waititi also leans into heavier questions through Klara, including whether love can be programmed and whether a robot could one day replace a person you have lost. That tracks with Ishiguro’s novel, which focuses heavily on love, sacrifice, and what an artificial being can understand about human pain.
Klara and the Sun hits theaters on October 23, 2026, and fans of Ishiguro’s novel will be watching closely to see how the movie handles its emotional weight on screen.