At some stage during any project’s lengthy stint in development hell, there must come a time when somebody somewhere asks if it’s even worth it. Sadly, nobody seemed to raise those issues during the 25 years audiences spent waiting for Space Jam: A New Legacy, with the results proving to be suitably dire.
Even if you hold the pandemic and a simultaneous HBO Max release accountable for the long-awaited follow-up’s box office disappointment – which would be a fair assessment, really – there were already plenty of warning signs that LeBron James was going to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was unfit to even contemplate lacing up Michael Jordan’s boots.
For one thing, there were no less than six writers credited on the screenplay, which is very rarely a good thing. In addition, there were the bizarre controversies that led grown adults to blast Space Jam 2 for allowing Pepe Le Pew to fall victim to the #MeToo movement, never mind the outcry that Lola Bunny – an anthropomorphized rabbit – wasn’t sexy enough.
In the end, the $150 million fantasy flopped, ended up losing $110 million for Warner Bros., scored a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 25 percent, and won three Razzies for Worst Actor, Worst Screen Couple, and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel. Ironically, that’s not a legacy anyone wants to leave behind, but the notorious disaster has at least dunked on the streaming charts.
Per FlixPatrol, the Space Jam successor the world wasn’t ready for has claimed a spot on the worldwide watch-lists of both iTunes and OSN, so at least people somewhere are still watching.