Much like entertainment giants Marvel and DC, Nike has built out an expansive football universe for its FIFA World Cup 2026 campaign. The brand has spent the past few weeks rewriting its own marketing playbook and dropping breadcrumbs of images and content teasing collaborations with soccer, entertainment, fashion and lifestyle stars, leaving fans anticipating what is sure to be one of the most talked-about spots amidst the onslaught of ads celebrating the biggest global sporting event.Today, that speculation ends with the drop of Rip the Script, an epic six-minute-long film created by longtime agency Wieden+Kennedy and directed by Dan Streit packed to the rafters with a galaxy of more than 30 stars including Kylian Mbappé, Vinícius “Vini Jr.” Júnior, Tyler Adams, Erling Haaland, LeBron James, Ronaldinho, Jorge Campos, Kim Kardashian, Channing Tatum, Young Miko, Travis Scott, Lisa of Blackpink, Central Cee and scene-stealing legends Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimović. Also popping up for cheeky appearances are actor Jason Sudeikis as his character from Ted Lasso and British sports broadcaster Kate Scott.The spot — for which cutdowns would be a criminal infraction, justifying a cavalcade of content in the coming weeks (bless the social teams at W+K and Nike) — follows the players and celebrities on a chaotic film set that goes awry when an overbearing director attempts to control a game that thrives in unexpected and thrilling moments. Shot appropriately in a frenetic style popular on TikTok to energize young audiences new to the sport, the pace is just right to allow devout fans time to absorb all the fun Easter eggs devoted to the lore and personalities of stars such as Mbappé, Vini Jr., Haaland, Ibrahimović and even Kardashian, whose soccer-loving son, Saint, also appears in the film. Streit, who cut his teeth in music videos, notably helming A$AP Rocky’s “Helicopter,” deftly manages to make a film that could have otherwise felt bloated with so many heavy-hitters feel just right, focusing less on a single celebrity or character and more on the sport and its surrounding culture, its future via a young player from Toma, the brand’s global youth-led street football platform — who is hilariously upstaged by Haaland while his Channing Tatum-played “stand-in” watches in awe — and naturally the products Nike ultimately wants to sell.“Rip the Script [is] a rallying cry to go and play football — to play it with instinct, with fearlessness and imagination,” Helena Thornton, VP of global brand marketing at Nike, explained to the audience at a media event at the brand’s New York HQ. “The whole premise is really built on one belief: The best moments in the game don’t happen from overthinking. They don’t happen from being over-controlled. They really happen if you just trust your gut … We’ve had the privilege of talking to hundreds of players at every single level of the game, and the one thing that we’ve heard over and over again is people are kind of sick and tired of everybody else’s opinion within the sport.”Enter the ‘Nike Football Universe’Prior to the release of Rip the Script, the brand began rolling out videos promoting its X2 capsule collections created in partnership with creative collaborators from its seven nation partners, the first three of which were Palace x England featuring soccer legend Wayne Rooney performing a Shakespearean monologue, Jacquemus x France featuring Mbappé and his French national teammates, and the vibrant Patta x Netherlands collection. The brand also released a video for its collaboration with Lego, while lifestyle brand Kids of Immigrants released its own video touting its collaboration directed by Joshua Kissi. “Nike’s fingerprints are all over the blueprint of World Cup marketing today,” Thornton said. “As we came into World Cup 2026, we really had to say to ourselves, ‘What do we do with that? How do we make sure that we stand out and we push things forward?’ We had to look at our own playbook and say, ‘Maybe it’s time that we go off script. Maybe this is the moment where we actually have to set the new blueprint for World Cup marketing.”She continued, “We’ve been very, very intentional about how we tell these stories. We want to make sure that if this is the world game, there are 100 different ways into it. We can come into it through a love of fashion, a love of innovation, a love that’s been passed down generations in the family. But football is a space for absolutely everybody, and through this, we’ve really created a new blueprint for how we want to tell stories. We want to make sure that we can speak to every different subculture around the world and bring them into this moment in time.”Another component integral to the campaign according to the brand is Toma, short for Toma El Juego, which translates in English to “Take the Game.” The community-centered platform, which will host its tournament finals in Los Angeles and globally on June 7, has hosted more than 100 tournaments over the past year across six continents and empowered the local neighborhoods to choose the music, art and style of each event.The finals will be livestreamed globally on Amazon and will reportedly feature youth players from the Los Angeles area alongside live performances, creators, collaborators and undisclosed special guests. Fans will have an opportunity to watch the finals in Bryant Park in New York and Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Thornton joked that the young star from Toma whose shining moment was comedically dimmed by Haaland in the spot might not have had the “Disney moment” of a happy ending in the film, but his future still looks bright. “We said, ‘You’re not going to be the kid that gets to score the goal at the end, but we promise you, you’ll have a true professional football experience because Erling Haaland will take the ball off you. Matteo has just had the summer of his lifetime with us, and we’ll continue to do so with Toma.”(Photo credit: Nike, used with permission)