Saman Kunan

On 4 May 2020, MGM announced they had acquired the film rights from Pure Flix. Film director Ron Howard will direct the film under his Imagine Entertainment banner. Storyteller Productions and Magnolia Me will co-produce the project. A release date has yet to be announced.

Saman Kunan, a 37-year-old former Thai Navy SEAL, died of asphyxiation during the rescue on 6 July while returning to a staging base in the cave after delivering supplies of air. The rescue diver Beirut Pakbara (Thai: เบรุต ปากบารา ; RTGS: Berut Pakbara ) died in December 2019 of a blood infection contracted during the operation.

Some observers, primarily in Western media, questioned whether assistant coach Ekkaphon Chanthawong should face criminal charges for leading the group into the caves, despite the warning sign at the entrance stating that it is dangerous to enter between July and November. The boys had entered the cave on 23 June, one week before the advised period. Local communities, as well as the boys' parents, emphasised that they did not blame the boys or their coach, as the rain had arrived a month earlier than usual. Vern Unsworth, a British caver mapping the cave, stated, "Nobody's to blame, not the coach, not the boys. They were just very unlucky ... It wasn’t just the rain that day, the mountain is like a sponge and waters from earlier rain were raising the levels". Unsworth said that he himself had been planning to make a solo venture into the complex on 24 June, when he received a telephone call saying the boys were missing there.

FIFA, via a letter from its president Gianni Infantino to the president of the Football Association of Thailand, invited the children and coach to the World Cup final if circumstances allowed. The entire team was expected to remain hospitalised for at least a week, and watched the final on television instead. FC Barcelona invited the team to play in their international academy tournament in 2019 and to watch a first-team game at their home stadium Camp Nou. England and Manchester City F.C. defender Kyle Walker said he wanted to send them shirts, after spotting that one of the rescued boys was wearing a "Three Lions" jersey. In October 2018 the boys traveled to the UK as guests at Old Trafford for the Manchester United F.C. home match against Everton F.C. in the Premier League. The boys were invited by the IOC to the opening ceremony of the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires.

December 2019: Thai Navy SEAL Beirut Pakbara dies from blood infection contracted during the cave rescue.

The 2019 film The Cave was written and directed by Thai-Irish filmmaker Tom Waller, and features many of the real-life cave divers as themselves.

In June and July 2018, a widely publicised cave rescue saved the lives of members of a junior football team who were trapped inside the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand. Twelve members of the team, aged eleven to sixteen, and their 25-year-old assistant coach entered the cave on 23 June after football practice. Shortly afterwards, heavy rains partially flooded the cave, blocking their way out.

On Saturday 23 June 2018, a group of twelve boys aged between 11 and 16 from a local junior football team named the Wild Boars and their 25-year-old assistant coach, Ekkaphon Chanthawong, went missing after setting out to explore the cave. According to early news reports, they planned to have a birthday party in the cave after the football practice, and spent a significant sum of money on food, but they refuted this in a news conference after the rescue. The team was stranded in the tunnels by sudden and continuous rainfall after they had entered the cave. They had to leave some food supplies behind when fleeing the rising water.

On 10 July 2018, a managing partner of US film production company Pure Flix announced that the firm was planning to create a feature film based on the rescue, with potential for worldwide release. Ivanhoe Pictures of SK Global Entertainment also expressed interest in a separate project, with Jon Chu slated as the director.

A song about the rescue "Heroes of Thailand" was written on 16 July 2018 by British music producer Will Robinson, with English and North Thailand dialect lyrics, and was performed by the Isan Project featuring Ronnarong Khampha.

Multiple dangers—the threat of more heavy rain, dropping oxygen levels, and the difficulty or impossibility of finding or drilling an escape passage—forced rescuers to make the decision to bring out the team and coach with experienced divers. The Thai Navy SEALs and US Air Force rescue experts met with the Thai Minister of the Interior who approved the plan. Ninety divers worked in the cave system, forty from Thailand and fifty from other countries. Rescuers at first considered teaching the boys basic diving skills to enable them to make the journey. Organisers built a mock-up of a tight passage with chairs, and divers practiced with local boys in a school swimming pool. Thai SEALs and US Air Force experts then refined the plan to use teams of divers to bring out the weakened boys.

Tham Luang Nang Non is a karstic cave complex beneath Doi Nang Non, a mountain range on the border between Thailand and Myanmar. The system is 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) long and has many deep recesses, narrow passages and tunnels winding under hundreds of metres of limestone strata. Since part of the cave system is seasonally flooded, a sign advising against entering the caves during the rainy season (July–November) is posted at the entrance.

The point where the boys became stranded was about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from the entrance and 800–1,000 metres (2,600–3,300 ft) below the top of the mountain. The route to them had several flooded sections, some with strong currents and zero visibility, and some extremely narrow parts, the smallest measuring only 38 by 72 centimetres (15 in × 28 in).

On 9 July, four more boys were rescued from the cave. On 10 July, the last four boys and their coach were rescued from the cave. Experience helped streamline the rescue procedure, so the total time to extract a boy was reduced from three hours on the first day to just over two hours on the final day, allowing four boys and the coach to be rescued. The three Thai Navy SEALs and the Army doctor who had stayed with the boys the entire time were the last to dive out. Three of these divers made it to Chamber 3, joining waiting rescuers when the pumps shut off for an uncertain reason, possibly due to a burst water pipe. Water levels in Chamber 3 started to rise, which would have cut off rescuers' access to Chamber 2, Chamber 1 and the entrance of the cave. "All of a sudden a water pipe burst and the main pump stopped working", a diver stated. "We really had to run from the third chamber to the entrance because the water level was rising very quickly – like 50 cm every 10 minutes." This forced up to 100 rescuers still located more than 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) inside the cave to evacuate in a hurry, abandoning the rescue equipment inside the cave. The last diver made it back to Chamber 3 as everyone was preparing to leave. The rescuers managed to rush to the cave exit in under an hour.

A member of Thai Navy SEALs class 30, Kunan had left the SEALs in 2006 at the rank of Petty Officer 1st class and was working in security at the Suvarnabhumi Airport when he volunteered to assist the cave rescue. He was posthumously promoted to Lieutenant Commander by the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Navy, an unprecedented rise of seven ranks. A funeral sponsored and attended by the Thai royal family was held on 14 July. On the same day, he was also awarded the Knight Grand Cross (first class) of the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant by King Vajiralongkorn. A memorial statue of him may form a part of a proposed tourist attraction at the site.

British caver Vern Unsworth, who lives in Chiang Rai and has detailed knowledge of the cave complex, was scheduled to make a solo venture into the cave on 24 June when he received a call about the missing boys. Unsworth advised the Thai government to request assistance from the British Cave Rescue Council (BCRC). On 25 June, Thai Navy SEALs divers arrived and began searching the cave. A Thai Navy SEAL said the water was so murky that even with lights they could not see where they were going underwater. After continuous rain, which further flooded the entrance, the search had to be periodically interrupted. On 27 June, three BCRC cave divers arrived with specialist equipment including Heyphone LF radios, followed by separate teams of open water divers. On 28 June, a United States Air Force team from the 320th Special Tactics Squadron, the 31st Rescue Squadron, and the 353rd Special Operations Group joined them. By 29 June, an Australian Federal Police team of Specialist Response Group divers had arrived and on Sunday a Chinese team of divers from the Beijing Peaceland Foundation.