Star Trek Beyond and Fast & Furious 6 director Justin Lin has signed onto the sequel of Warner Bros' 1996 intergalactic cartoon basketball classic, Space Jam.
Lin will be co-writing with Andrew Dodge (Bad Words) and Alfredo Botello (Hollywood Adventures), while directing and producing through his company, Perfect Storm Entertainment.
Rumors have been thriving over a sequel for Space Jam ever since the first one came out, more or less. But things revved up again when LeBron James' Spring Hill Entertainment signed a deal with Warner Bros last July, opening the door for James to potentially star in a Space Jam sequel.
The latest on his involvement comes from ESPN's Brian Windhorst, who tweeted that as of Monday there is no deal in place involving LeBron. Of course, Justin Lin is really dead set on doing the movie with LeBron, so who knows?
With plenty of fans on pins and needles lots of others are demanding the return of Bill Murray. And that's fine with us.
But being that the movie isn’t written yet, we have so many questions! Not least of which, can it actually be good?
1. Will LeBron James be the star?
There isn’t anybody else from the NBA today that could do the job (could have been Kobe back in the day, but now he might have to take a Gandalf-type role on the hero's journey) from a star-power marketing point.
[anad]
And from Trainwreck we already know his comedy chops are way more solid than Michael Jordan (honestly not saying a lot). Love MJ to death but he can’t act his way out of one of his own shoeboxes.
2. Should Danny Devito's Mr. Swackhammer and the Monstars return as antagonists?
The whole point of Space Jam is that the aliens steal NBA players’ talent and Jordan has to play them for it with a team of Loony Toons (and save Toon World).
In the sequel, basketball must remain the primary conflict resolution method, but everything besides that could change a lot… it could be an interdimensional fantasy team sort of situation. Anything could happen.
Suggestion for the team: Steph Curry, Kawhi Leonard, Draymond Green, Dirk Nowitzki, and Tim Duncan. All players that have come at the King in the Finals and won. In this scenario, LeBron loses and the movie is basically a cautionary tale on moving back to Cleveland for any reason.
3. Will it look like old school Looney Toons, or even throwback to '96?
It’s been twenty years since the last movie, and everything seems to be 3-D IMAX. So how are they going to play this? Probably as cutting edge as possible.
Plus, Lin is an action/space/adventure director and when you put those two things together you should get a pretty good Space Jam II.
4. Is Billy West on board?
He was Michael Jordan’s offscreen co-star in the first Space Jam providing voices for Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.
He’s also the voice of countless Futurama characters as well as the stars of Ren and Stimpy, Doug, CatDog, and more. The man needs to be in Space Jam II; he’s the only man for the job.
5. Should R. Kelly be the featured artist of the soundtrack?
His version of “I Believe I Can Fly” was amazing, but he definitely should not have anything to do with Space Jam anymore. The first Space Jam came out before we found out about R.Kelly’s penchant for peeing on underage people.
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Now that we know who he likes to pee on, let’s keep him out of Space Jam II. How about a positive role model? How about Beyonce?
6. Can we do this movie without Kevin Hart?
Unfortunately, that's not likely.
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[via Complex] [Feature Image Courtesy Instagram]