The film is called Space Jam: A New Legacy, but a better title might have been Space Jam: Everything but the Kitchen Sink. The first trailer, released this morning, is a “manic” (that’s Warner Bros.’ own description) blend of live-action, animation, and vfx, plus seemingly every IP owned by Warnermedia, including The Iron Giant, the Hanna-Barbera universe, the DC universe, A Clockwork Orange, Thundercats, and The Game of Thrones.
Less reminiscent of Space Jam, it feels tonally more like a Warner Bros.-themed reboot of the coke-addled Bakshi hybrid Cool World. Watch the trailer below:
The premise is ultimately similar to the original — there’s basketball, Looney Tunes, and a comedic sensibility — but the details are different: bye bye Michael Jordan, hello LeBron James and evil A.I. humanoids. In the film, James — who plays a version of himself — and his onscreen son Dom (Cedric Joe) are sucked into the “Serververse,” a digital world inhabited by a rogue digital humanoid (Don Cheadle). Needless to say, things culminate in a basketball game.
