Space Jam
Michael Jordan teams with Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes to beat a squad of talent-stealing aliens, the Monstars. A live-action/animation hybrid with a monster soundtrack, it made the Tune Squad jersey a playground staple.
Space Jam opened on November 15, 1996, the first feature from Warner Bros. Feature Animation, directed by Joe Pytka on a budget of roughly $80 million. It grew out of a series of Nike ads pairing Michael Jordan with Bugs Bunny, and its plot had aliens' 'Monstars' steal the talent of real NBA stars — forcing Jordan, freshly un-retired from baseball, to lead the Looney Tunes in a championship game.
The film grossed over $250 million worldwide, remaining the highest-grossing basketball movie for more than two decades, and its soundtrack went 6× platinum, spinning off R. Kelly's Grammy-winning 'I Believe I Can Fly' and the Quad City DJ's theme. Critics were mixed — Looney Tunes legend Chuck Jones publicly disliked the characterizations — but for kids in 1996 the Jordan-plus-cartoons combination was irresistible, and Tune Squad jerseys were everywhere.
The movie's website, launched in 1996, famously stayed online almost entirely unchanged for around 25 years, becoming an internet artifact in its own right. A long-gestating sequel, Space Jam: A New Legacy with LeBron James, finally arrived in 2021.
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