‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’ Drops Trailer Heavy on King James and Cartoon Cameos
Looney doesn’t begin to cover it.
The new trailer for Space Jam: A New Legacy dropped Saturday. The film features NBA basketball star LeBron James and a team of Looney Tunes animated characters who must win a virtual basketball game against the digitized champions of an evil A.I.
The sequel updates the live action/animation blend of the original, amping up the concept for the virtual age. Social media users have noted that the result looks like a cross between The LEGO Movie and Ready Player One, with a hint of TRON.
In the trailer, Evil A.I. Don Cheadle forces LeBron, the dad of trouble teen Dom (Cedric Joe), into playing the “Goon Squad” team with only other Looney Tunes backing him up. This includes Tweety and Granny, so it is the classic underdog story, even with King James leading the team. There are rumored cameos by WNBA players Diana Taurasi, Nneka Ogwumike, and Chiney Ogwumike, though, so perhaps the King isn’t totally on his own.
Warner Bros. seem to have pulled out all the stops with crowd cameos; a careful viewing will show a couple of War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road, a multiverse of various Batman villains and The Mask. There are also appearances from Hanna-Barbera toons, King Kong, the Iron Giant, and (spotted by some eagle-eyed Twitter users) Bette Davis from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and some of the violent Droogs from the hard R-rated A Clockwork Orange. Because this is a kids’ movie.
Daffy Duck rounds out the cast.
The original Space Jam was the story of NBA superstar Michael Jordan’s return to basketball in 1995 after retiring in 1993 for a brief stint as a baseball player. In that film, Jordan falls into the Looney Tunes animated world to help the “Tune Squad”— made up of the most popular animated Looney Tunes characters — win a basketball game against a group of enslaved aliens called the Nerdlucks.
In addition to Jordan, NBA players Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Shawn Bradley, Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, and Muggsy Bogues also made cameos.
The movie got mixed reviews, but it was a box office success, earning more than $230 million globally, and over the years it has become a cult favorite, especially among 90s kids. Warner Bros. has been trying to make a sequel over the years, finally reviving the project in 2018 and choosing Malcolm D. Lee (Girls’ Trip) to direct. He replaced Terence Nance, who left in 2019 due to creative differences.
Space Jam: A New Legacy comes out July 16, in theaters and on HBO Max.