Ever since it was announced that LeBron James will be starring in a sequel toSpace Jam, audiences have been wondering what kind of a storySpace Jam: A New Legacywill feature. A crazy one, according to a synopsis for the film that was posted on Twitter by Hollywood writer Ben Mekler. While Mekler is not attached to the film, he has stated that the synopsis is not a joke and he obtained it from an email about a test screening forSpace Jam: A New Legacy.
According to the synopsis, the film will involveLeBron Jamestaking a trip through Warner studio with his son. During the trip, the two get trapped in a world made up of all of the studio’s many movies and tv shows, with the entire meta-fictional world being controlled by apowerful entity played by Don Cheadle.
Looking for a way toescape the Warner-Verse, James and his son take the help of Bugs Bunny and the rest of theLooney Tunes, who must band together to play an epic game of basketball against gamified versions of the world’s best basketball players. This last part appears to be the only similarity that the newSpace Jamhas with the original film starring Michael Jordan.
While the synopsis puts an unexpected spin on the world ofSpace Jam, rumors have been swirling for months now thatA New Legacywill feature characters from many Warner movies and shows. Back in March, the Instagram handle DCUVERSE shared behind-the-scenes footage from the film that involved appearances from Jim Carrey’s The Mask, and was also said to include Pennywise the Clown, and characters from theHarry Potterfranchise.
If the new synopsis turns out to be accurate, the appearances by the other characters make sense. We already know that Warner is planning to reboot the DCEU into a multiverse where all DC Comics movies ever made exist within the same Warner multiverse. So it is quite possible that the studio is looking to create a similar shared universe for all their movies and shows.
It should be noted that the story forSpace Jam: A New Legacywith regards to a shared universe seems quite similar to the approach taken by Disney in 2018’sWreck It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet, which featured a shared universe of all the Disney princesses from the era of their classic animated films.
If Warner’s experiment succeeds, expect every other studio to also scramble to set up their own shared universes, which means we might soon get to see Jason Bourne showing up in aFast and the Furiousmovie over at Universal Pictures, or The Smurfs visiting Stuart Little in a Sony movie.
Space Jam: A New Legacyis directed by Malcolm D. Lee and produced by Ryan Coogler, LeBron James, Duncan Henderson, and Maverick Carter. It features LeBron James, Don Cheadle, and Sonequa Martin-Green and is set to release June 24, 2025.
