In the Michael Jordan ‘Air’ film, plus why NFL, others in the sports film industry are buying

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By Webdesk



For years, professional sports have accounted for most of the top-rated, most-watched programming on traditional TV. Now, perhaps more prominently than ever, they’re expanding to dominate the big screen and streaming services.

The NFL, king of American sports TV, is leading the charge. Tom Bradys”80 for Brady,” a road trip comedy featuring the quarterback’s biggest comeback in the Super Bowl, exceeded box office expectations for Paramount Pictures. This summer, Netflix will debut “Quarterback,” a new series that stars Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins, and Marcus Mariota. HBO Sports will follow suit with their latest series ‘Hard Knocks’ and ‘American Underdog’, Lionsgate’s biopic about Rams legend Kurt Warnerstill celebrating accolades as of its late 2021 release.

However, football is just the beginning. The entire sports landscape is both connected and expanding on screen. Nike, the NFL’s official apparel partner, is at the center of Ben Affleck’s upcoming Michael Jordan movie “Air.” LeBron James, the Jordan of his day, enlisted filmmaker Ryan Coogler to produce “Space Jam: A New Legacy” (2021), a sequel to the cult classic Jordan. Coogler is also a producer of “Creed III”, Michael B. Jordan’s current blockbuster hit. And now Skydance Sports, fresh off a production credit on “Air,” is partnering with NFL Films to create more feature film content.

What’s behind all these team-ups? Why is the sports genre particularly relevant and successful at the moment? We sat down with several key people on the ground — Alex Convery, screenwriter for “Air” and Mark Ellis, editor of Rotten Tomatoes — to dive in:

Note: The following interviews have been edited for length and clarity and consolidated into panel format.

What fuels the recent and current success of home and cinema sports content?

Els: In our most basic sense, people like competition. Even if you don’t consider yourself a sports fan, there’s a reason everyone tunes in to watch the Super Bowl. We love the human aspect of it. How do you chat? Usually it’s the weather or sports, and it’s not always interesting to make movies about the weather. And in terms of why sports are relevant now, in terms of a cinematic force, when you look at how fragmented our society has become — politically, on the Internet — we still want that huge sense of community, and the kind of sports film of a safe landing place. before that. The stakes are as clear as day. There is a sort of redeeming factor. There is an underdog.

Conversion: Sport can unite people, and it has been a common ground around the world for centuries. There’s a reason we still sign up for a season knowing that 99 percent of the time our hearts will be broken. Sport is a great expression of human emotion. You go through everything. Even in a baseball season, the best teams lose 60 off-season games. Sport breaks your heart, makes you fall in love, makes you excited, makes you sad. It’s actually a tableau for the human experience, which is why they sound so resonant.

Are there other factors that make sports films so attractive?

Els: A sports movie can be any genre. It can exceed normal limits. You might have some people come to see “The Sandlot” for the laughs, some for the nostalgia, and other people just love baseball. For example, Red Sox fans go to see “Fever Pitch,” and to them, it’s a wonderful romantic comedy. For Yankees fans, that’s a horror movie.

Conversion: It’s interesting, I’m a huge sports fan who normally doesn’t like sports movies for whatever reason. Probably because I just love the real field, on the field, whatever sport we’re talking about, I love it so much that it’s often hard to watch a game. So the best sports movies aren’t much different from the best movies that are written big, which all comes down to having great characters. … This one (‘Air’) is obviously sport-adjacent. There is a short basketball scene in it. So yes, it’s a movie about sports, but is it a “sports movie”? I don’t know, that’s probably up for debate.

Is sports content really measurably growing as a successful genre?

Els: Most of the highest-ranked sports movies in history, at least according to the Tomatometer – critical and fan opinion – have been released fairly recently. ‘Creed’ (2015), ‘Creed III’ (2023), ‘Moneyball’ (2011) are all very high quality and relatively new. I don’t know if we know exactly how to make better sports movies, but people are trying to find common ground. It’s actually why we watch real sports in the first place, right? You love the game, even if it breaks you. … We have an insatiable appetite for sports. There’s a reason sports talk shows go on all day and all night.

“Air,” which documents how Nike’s collaboration with Michael Jordan began, taps into this reality.

Els: It will definitely end up in ‘Certified Fresh’ on the Tomatometer. And why is that? I think because it makes these guys human. It shows us Michael Jordan, his family and these big names when they were just people trying to build something big, when they were just people with dreams taking risks.

Conversion: One of the goals of the movie was to show how groundbreaking the equity part of the deal was, and how much this wave of — I mean, it’s what people are saying now in the NBA, player empowerment. We see it now in college sports, with NIL. It really started with that deal. A shoe has never been so personified by a player himself. And look, in the end we don’t just watch sports for the teams, do we? Otherwise, you’re just rooting for laundry. I think Seinfeld was the one who said that first. But you do it for people. I mean sport, at its best, is like, wow, it’s amazing what people can do. And it’s the people in the uniform, not the uniform itself, that create value.

There’s a meta quality to all of this, too, given the sports fans that star in “Air.”

Conversion: Each day (on set) had its own little reminder. Of course, it was such a dream to work with Matt (Damon) and Ben (Affleck). For me, as a sports fan, the funniest part of the production was that the NBA Finals were going on while we were shooting. And Ben and Matt are clearly huge Celtics fans. And one of the producers in the film is Peter Guber, owner of the Warriors. So there was a little back and forth every day, those two weeks of the finale, which was just hilarious to watch.

By the way, was there a Michael Jordan from the cast of ‘Air’?

Conversion: I try not to write with that attitude (to envision certain actors) simply because 99 times out of 100 your heart will be broken. This would have been the only time if I imagined the dream cast, we actually got it. But look, especially with true stories, you almost don’t have to imagine the cast because they’re real people. So I imagined Sonny Vaccaro and Phil Knight and Rob Strasser and Deloris Jordan (Michael’s mom) when I was writing it. … I certainly would never, even in my wildest dreams, have cast Matt, Ben, Viola, Jason, both of Chris’s, and so on and on. … And look, everyone was great. Matt clearly has the bigger role and had more work on it. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t say Viola, since Deloris is sort of the movie’s lure and ultimately the heart of the movie and, in many ways, the movie’s protagonist. I’ll always remember being able to just watch her play that role and just get to work. I mean, she’s next level in the movie.

What else can we expect on the horizon, in terms of sports content?

Els: I don’t know if people remember, but one of Brett Favre’s last games with the Vikings (in 2009), Fox had a camera where you could watch Favre the whole time. I feel like, in real sports, this is where we’re going — making those events more cinematic. Sports films shed light on the humanity of these athletes. That sort of thing does something similar. You know, we mentioned “80 for Brady,” which is certified fresh: If that was a fictional quarterback in that story, no one would believe it. No one would care. But we all know that Tom Brady actually did it, so we’re watching. Reality feeds the story.

Conversion: I’m writing another sports movie right now, which I can’t quite talk about. It hasn’t been announced yet. But it’s another basketball movie that I’ve been trying to make for a long time. Hopefully you read about it sooner rather than later. And it’s all about character. The best sports movies can never be about the final score. Otherwise, just go watch a game. You’re never going to capture that on camera in the same way. So it’s just finding those human stories in the games themselves.





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