Space Jam (franchise)
Space Jam is a film franchise that combines live-action basketball and cartoon animation, primarily featuring the iconic Looney Tunes characters. The original film, released in 1996, stars basketball legend Michael Jordan, who teams up with Bugs Bunny to save the Looney Tunes from aliens seeking to kidnap them for their amusement park. The film was inspired by a successful Nike advertising campaign and grossed over $250 million worldwide, spurring a range of merchandise that generated significant economic impact.
In 2021, the franchise saw a revival with the release of Space Jam: A New Legacy, featuring another basketball superstar, LeBron James. In this sequel, James must rescue his son from a digital world while enlisting the help of Bugs Bunny and other beloved characters. Although the sequel grossed over $163 million globally, it received mixed reviews from critics and disappointed some fans of the original film.
Both films are notable for their unique blend of sports and animation, showcasing various cameos from athletes and celebrities. The franchise has had a lasting cultural impact, particularly through its nostalgic ties to basketball and animation, appealing to audiences across generations.
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Space Jam (franchise)
Space Jam is a film franchise that melds live-action basketball and cartoon animation. The first film, released in 1996, stars famed athlete Michael Jordan interacting with multiple Looney Tunes characters. Danny DeVito headlines the celebrity voice-over cast. The concept of Space Jam originated in a television advertising campaign for Nike sneakers, and the film contains multiple products endorsed by Jordan. The 2021 sequel, Space Jam: A New Legacy (commonly known as Space Jam 2), stars another basketball legend, LeBron James.
The plot of Space Jam involves aliens seeking to kidnap Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes characters for enslavement. Bugs and his friends ask Jordan to help them avoid this fate. The first film cost about eight million dollars to make. It grossed over ninety million dollars in the United States and 250 million dollars worldwide. R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” won a Grammy Award and the soundtrack went platinum six times. The seventy-eight tie-in products featuring Jordan included shower curtains and edible cake decorations. Merchandising brought in 1.2 billion dollars. By 2009, the estimated economic impact of Space Jam was from four to six billion dollars globally. This number has only increased in the 2020s with the release of the sequel.
Background
Jim Riswold became a giant in the advertising industry for multiple successful ads. He created the Nike campaigns “I Am Tiger Woods” and “Bo Knows.” The latter featured Bo Jackson, the first modern athlete to play professional baseball and football in the same year. In the ads, Jackson participated in multiple sporting activities, including riding a bike and dunking a basketball, while promoting Nike’s cross-training athletic shoe. Joe Pytka directed the athlete in these ads. Jackson’s superior athletic achievements in baseball and football in 1989—he played in both the Major League Baseball All-Star Game and the Pro Bowl—propelled the campaign’s success, allowing Nike to finally overtake its primary rival, Reebok, as the top athletic shoe company.
Riswold had previously been tasked with creating Nike spots featuring Jordan. The athletic shoe company had developed basketball sneakers known as Air Jordans, which featured pump mechanisms to adjust the fit. Riswold, a fan of the Looney Tunes character Bugs Bunny, came up with an ad that aired during the 1992 Super Bowl. In the wildly successful ad “Hare Jordan,” the athlete and cartoon rabbit played one-on-one basketball. Jordan later told Riswold that the ad was his children’s favorite commercial because of Bugs Bunny. It was successful enough to inspire a heist-themed sequel in 1993, pitting Jordan and Bugs against Martin Martian.
Jordan’s agent, David Falk, pitched a movie based on “Hare Jordan” to Warner Bros. studio executives. Warner Bros. owned the Looney Tunes franchise and was looking for a way to reenergize it to appeal to a new audience. He emphasized the box office appeal of Jordan and the merchandising potential of a Looney Tunes film.
Pytka, who had also directed Jordan in a series of ads for Nike and Gatorade, was selected to direct the film. He tried to get an established star for the role of a publicist, but Pytka said big names including Jason Alexander and Chevy Chase did not want to appear in what they thought would be a bomb. Eventually, actor Wayne Knight from the series Seinfeld was cast.
The studio worked to ensure that Jordan was happy on the set. Warner Bros. built an indoor gymnasium for Jordan near the studio where he was filming, and NBA stars, including Magic Johnson, often dropped in for pickup games. Pytka scheduled filming from nine in the morning until one in the afternoon. After a two-hour break for lunch and a workout, filming resumed, wrapping up no later than six o’clock. Despite the pains Pytka took to make his star comfortable, executives frequently dropped by to meet Jordan or introduce him to VIPs. Jordan bore it for several weeks but grew increasingly annoyed by the interruptions, according to Pytka.
Jordan was filmed on a green screen set. Actors in green stretchy bodysuits stood in for the cartoon characters, kneeling to be at the right height, so Jordan would be looking in the correct place when he delivered his lines. Technicians replaced the green with the work of one hundred and fifty animators in post-production.
Overview
In Space Jam (1996), Swackhammer, voiced by DeVito, is the owner of Moron Mountain, an amusement park planet. Business has been slow, so he looks for new attractions to bring in visitors and revenue. He discovers the Looney Tunes characters and sends some henchmen to collect them by any means necessary. Bugs Bunny, the de facto leader of the animated earthlings, cleverly strikes a deal with their would-be kidnappers, known as the Nerdlucks. He tricks them into agreeing to a competition; if Bugs and his crew lose, they must go to Moron Mountain. The aliens agree to decide the issue with basketball.
Because the Nerdlucks are short-legged and small, the Looney Tunes feel confident they can win. However, the Nerdlucks steal the talent of major basketball stars. They transform themselves into huge athletes and rename their team the Monstars. Faced with this onslaught of athleticism, Bugs yanks Jordan out of his world and into an alternate cartoon universe. Bugs implores superstar Jordan for assistance in helping his team, the Tune Squad, win and avoid enslavement.
Space Jam features multiple athletes and actors in cameos. Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, Shawn Bradley, and Bill Murray appear. It is also notable for the introduction of a new Looney Tunes character, Lola Bunny, who is Bugs’s love interest.
The box office success of the first film, despite mixed reviews, prompted talks of a sequel. These went nowhere for years, largely because Jordan declined to participate. More than two decades later, Warner Bros. finally filmed Space Jam: A New Legacy, starring Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James. It was released in 2021 in theaters and on pay-cable channel HBO MAX.
The sequel finds James in need of help to rescue his on-screen son, Dom. The boy has been pulled into a cyber world, the Warner 3000 Server-verse, by an artificial intelligence, Al-G Rhythm, portrayed by Don Cheadle. James, also trapped in this cyber world, recruits Bugs, Lola Bunny, and other Looney Tunes to challenge the team of digital basketball players known as the Goon Squad. Looney Tunes in the sequel, in addition to the bunnies, include Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. The US theatrical release of the film, billed as a twenty-fifth anniversary-sequel, was scheduled for July 16, 2021. The film went on to gross over 163 million dollars globally, although it was largely negatively perceived by movie critics. Many involved with the original Space Jam film also expressed their disappointment in the film's sequel. It was, however, nominated for several awards during the 2022 awards season.
Bibliography
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