‘Melania’ Producer, Martin Sorrell to Make FIFA-Approved World Cup Documentary

Fernando Sulichin, CEO New Element Media and Sir Martin Sorrell Joshua Sammer/Getty Images; Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile for Web Summit/Getty Images

British media executive Martin Sorrell of S4 Capital is teaming up with Fernando Sulichin, a producer on the notorious Melania documentary, for a feature documentary on the 2026 World Cup made with the “collaboration and support” of soccer world governing body FIFA.

The doc, Chasing the Dream, will, according to the official pitch, provide an “intimate and unexpected perspective” on the world’s most popular sporting tournament. The film will go out on Disney+ worldwide.

Monks Film, a specialized production arm of Sorrell’s digital marketing company Monks, a subsidiary of S4 Capital, will produce Chasing the Dream together with Sulichin’s New Element Media. Pablo E. Bossi, producer of the Argentinian soccer doc Muchachos, which looked at Argentine fans worldwide celebrating the national team’s 2022 World Cup win in Qatar, is also on board.

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“The FIFA World Cup is that rare moment when the world pauses and beats as one,” said Sulichin in a statement. “In collaboration with FIFA, we are capturing a global cultural moment that will resonate long after the final whistle.”

The project will mark the first feature doc for S4 Capital, the advertising group Sorrell launched in 2018 after leaving market leader WPP, which he had run since 1985. Sorrell said the move into film production was “a natural evolution of our model to capitalize on the growth of sports franchises and global branding.”

The doc will be made with the cooperation of soccer world governing body FIFA, whose president, Gianni Infantino, presented U.S. President Donald Trump with FIFA’s hastily-organized peace prize in December, just two months before the U.S. and Israel began their bombing war on Iran.

The Iran War could disrupt this year’s World Cup, scheduled to be held June 11 to July 19 across sixteen cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Iran’s sports minister has said his national team will be pulling out of the tournament in protest for the U.S. killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a bombing raid on Feb. 28.

Even before the war, many international fans had expressed fears of traveling to the U.S. for the tournament, citing stringent new visa and border controls and harsh immigration policies introduced by the Trump government. Exorbitant ticket prices will all limit who can attend the matches.and the immigration policies

FIFA has also been criticized for allegedly gauging fans with so-called dynamic pricing for World Cup tickets, charging exorbitant prizes for matches. The fans’ group Football Supporters Europe (FSE) and consumer rights organization Euroconsumers submitted a formal complaint to the European Commission on Tuesday, accusing FIFA of abusing its monopoly position “to impose excessive ticket prices and opaque and unfair purchasing conditions on European fans.”

The complaint notes that prices for this summer’s tournament will be significantly higher than at any previous World Cup, with tickets for the final at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on July 19 starting at $4,185, seven times the cost of the cheapest ticket for the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar, and more than 40 times the cost of the most affordable seat at the 2024 European Championship final in Germany.