Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Chris Tucker, Marlon Wayans, Chris Messina, Matthew Maher, Tom Papa and Julius Tennon have joined the cast of the sports drama based on true events that will reunite Ben Affleck with Matt Damon after ‘The Good Bad’. Will Hunting’, ‘Dogma’ and the recent ‘The Last Duel’. Produced by Amazon Studios, Mandalay Pictures and Skydance’s newly created sports division, Skydance Sports, the film revolves around Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike exec tasked with relentlessly pursuing Michael Jordan until he finally, in 1984, signed him. a contract that forever changed the history of the company and the sport. Nike’s campaign with Jordan was extremely aggressive, creative and very brave for the time. The effort was worth it: In the first 3 years, more than 150 million Air Jordan shoes were sold worldwide. The rest, what has been said, is history. The film will focus on Vaccaro’s efforts and introduce audiences to Jordan’s parents, as well as the coaches, advisors, friends and others close to what he is considered to be the greatest basketball player of all time. And it is that Jordan’s will be a mythical figure that will continuously hover over the entire film… but whom we will never get to see. Damon will play the aforementioned Vaccaro while Affleck will play Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike. Bateman will play Rob Strasser, Vaccaro’s boss, while Davis will play Jordan’s mother, Deloris Jordan, and Tucker as Howard White, a former college basketball player who acted as a liaison between Nike and the NBA players. For his part, Wayans will play coach George Raveling and Messina will play David Falk, Jordan’s original agent. Affleck himself will direct the film, marking the first time that Damon will be under his command as an actor. In turn, both sign a script that starts from an original draft by Alex Convery appropriately titled ‘Air Jordan’ which was part of the 2021 Black List, and is also produced by Peter Guber, Jason Michael Berman, Jeff Robinov, Madison Ainley and David Ellison. One of the main sources of inspiration for the project will be the 2015 ESPN documentary ‘Sole Man’, which is centered on Vaccarro and his story. To obtain the rights to Vaccaro’s life and put together the project, the collaboration of the president of Skydance Sports, Jon Weinbach, and the president of Mandalay Pictures, Peter Guber, who already worked together on ‘The Last Dance’, ESPN’s acclaimed non-fiction series that covers the life, work and miracles of Michael Jordan over the course of ten episodes. The future film, still without a definite title -although ‘Air Jordan’ sounds tempting- and whose filming will begin next Monday in the city of Los Angeles, will be released exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories around the world.
