Space Jam has rightly become a beloved animated classic since first being released in 1996, but the wait for a follow-up - 2021's Space Jam: A New Legacy - ultimately proved not to be worth it.
The disappointing follow-up subbed in LeBron James for Michael Jordan and, despite a string of high-profile cameos, the result was a largely forgettable movie. However, it's now been revealed (via Toonado.com) that original plans called for the sequel to put the spotlight on legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk in a movie rather appropriately titled Skate Jam!
Appearing on a recent edition of Hot Ones, he explained that Warner Bros. approached him in the early 2000s with the idea to take the iconic Looney Tunes characters and bring them into the popular world of skateboarding.
"They presented the idea to me, that it would be Skate Jam, much along the lines of Space Jam, with all the Looney Tunes characters, and then I was going to be the main real person," Hawk recalls. "I was leaving for Australia, coincidentally to work on a different independent film there, and they said, 'We wanna meet you at LAX [airport], because we wanna finalize all the details.'"
"So they met me at that restaurant in the middle of LAX, and they said, 'This is happening.' Like, 'Here are the script ideas, here's the poster.' And I remember thinking, 'When is this going to happen?' [They said], 'When you get back, we're gonna finalize all the details.' I go, 'Awesome!'"
"[I] get on the plane [and] go to Australia. Meanwhile, they released Back in Action, which was a Looney Tunes film with Brendan Fraser, and it apparently it didn't do the numbers that they had hoped, and that was supposed to be their way to reintroduce Looney Tunes characters. By the time I got back from Australia, they weren't calling anymore."
"It was gone, it was just gone," he concludes. "It was more like, 'What happened? Let's all meet up again! This is gonna be fun, right?' Yeah. It was a bummer."
It's a shame this never happened but the moment has now passed, especially as skateboarding isn't quite as popular now as it was when this idea was first dreamed up. These animated characters will return to our screens next year, however, in The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.
Directed by Pete Browngardt, the movie - which will be released theatrically - stars Porky Pig and Daffy Duck as unlikely heroes and Earth’s only hope when facing the threat of alien invasion. In this buddy comedy, the heroes race to save the world, delivering all the laugh-out-loud gags and vibrant visuals that made the Looney Tunes so iconic, but on an epic scale not seen in the franchise before.
You can hear more from Hawk in the player below.