NBA star Lebron James surprised a lot of people last summer when his supporting role in Amy Schumer's Trainwreck turned out to be really funny. Shortly thereafter he signed a production deal with Warner Brothers that got a lot of people talking about one project: a follow-up to Space Jam, the 1996 basketball meets Looney Tunes film that starred Michael Jordan. While it is more than clear that this is a project all parties are truly interested in making, that doesn’t mean anybody is in a hurry to get it done.
The talk of Lebron James starring in a Space Jam sequel predates his deal with Warner Brothers, but when he brought his production company SpringHill Entertainment together to work with the studio, the one responsible for the original movie, everybody took notice of that interesting coincidence. However, in a recent Cleveland.com feature that dives into the details of the production deal, the president of SpringHill, Jamal Henderson, said that while Space Jam 2 is totally a thing, it’s not a thing that’s going anywhere at the moment.
It’d be crazy not to say that it’s something on the radar, it’s super on the radar, but it’s not something we have any news on. There’s no sort of start on it.
So if you’re really looking forward to Lebron James taking on the MonStars, or whatever a Space Jam 2 would be about, you can be confident that everybody is going to work to make it happen- just don’t think that everybody is currently working on it. At this point Lebron is still focused on his day job as a professional basketball player and, while he’ll have an offseason in which he could work on something, there just isn’t enough time in which to get another Space Jam ready. At best, they could start the conversation about Space Jam 2 this summer but, as nobody seems to know what the movie would be about, conversations is all that could possibly happen.
While we’re not sure how many people in the world are super excited in anticipation of Space Jam 2, those select fans will need to relax a bit. The good news is that both Lebron James specifically, and SpringHill Entertainment more generally, are both totally on board with the idea. There’s no equivocating over whether or not they’re considering the project. If past is prologue, maybe Space Jam 2 fans can look at a movie like Indiana Jones 5. In a similar fashion, Lucasfilm was always honest they were planning on making the sequel, they just didn’t know when. Eventually, all that became an official announcement. It’s likely Space Jam 2 will see a similar path to production.
Are you disappointed you’ll have to wait for Space Jam 2 or just excited that it’s coming at all? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
