Why did Michael Jordan spend a summer shooting a kids’ movie? Two words: brand synergy
Everybody get up, it’s time to slam now, we got a real jam goin’ down. Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures The Last Dance is not an especially comedic watch, but God bless whoever edited Sunday night’s installment, as they gave us what seems likely to end up as the most hilarious moment of the entire project.
The docuseries otherwise swerves around the comedic potential of an athlete of Jordan’s caliber forced to endure the indignities of a modern studio blockbuster, preferring instead to tell a story about how the pickup games Jordan played during the gaps in his shooting schedule got his body and mind back into championship shape.
There were other brand-building elements at play too. Falk pitched Jordan to Warners as a figure whose appeal “transcends the world of sports,” and Space Jam would only increase his Q rating. Millions of children who weren’t staying up for the Eastern Conference Semifinals would still go out and see the film in theaters, where it made $230 million worldwide, becoming, in the process, an integral part of the millennial canon.
And the movie would pay off in other ways. As The Last Dance explains, the 1995 Bulls lost in part because they had no one who could fill the hole left by the departure of Horace Grant. For years, Space Jam director Joe Pytka has taken credit for helping them find Grant’s replacement. “I said, ‘Why haven’t you guys gone after Dennis Rodman? […] The guy doesn’t shoot, he plays defense, he rebounds, and he doesn’t get in your way,’” Pytka recalled to Entertainment Weekly in 2016.
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