According to Deadline, Ben Affleck‘s currently untitled Nike drama for Amazon has just added a host of big names to its cast.
Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Chris Tucker, Marlon Wayans, and Chris Messina have all joined the project which is being developed by Amazon, Skydance Sports, and Mandalay Pictures.
Affleck is already on board to star in the film alongside good friend Matt Damon. The film tells the story of how maverick sneaker salesman Sonny Vaccaro led Nike – at the time a fledgling running shoe company – in its pursuit of the most transformative athlete in the history of American sports: Michael Jordan.
Damon will play Vaccaro, while Affleck will portray Nike co-founder Phil Knight, as the film focuses on Nike’s effort to sign Jordan in the 80s, an endorsement that seemed impossible at the time but would become the most significant relationship between an athletic brand and an athlete and launched the global, multibillion-dollar contemporary sneaker industry.
Bateman will play Vaccaro’s boss Rob Strasser, the longtime Nike executive, while Davis will portray Deloris Jordan, MJ’s mother, who was a big influence on the deal. Tucker is on board as Howard White, a former basketball player at Maryland who became a junior executive at Nike’s basketball department in the 80s.
Wayans will play George Raveling, the trailblazing Black coach who was the assistant on the gold medal-winning U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team, where he met and befriended Jordan, and finally Messina has signed on for the role of David Falk, Jordan’s original agent and the man often credited for coming up with the term “Air Jordan.”
There’s no doubt that this film has been commissioned based mostly off the huge success of ESPN’s 10-part documentary series The Last Dance, which chronicled Jordan’s Chicago Bulls dynasty in the 90s. While this won’t be as much about basketball on the court, Jordan’s legacy can’t be separated from the impact he had off it as a global brand.
Alex Convery wrote the original script for the project, which ended up on the 2021 Black List of best unproduced Hollywood screenplays. Mandalay Pictures brought it to Skydance Sports President Jon Weinbach, who then secured Vaccarro’s life rights. Affleck and Damon have reportedly done a pass on the script themselves.
Affleck and Damon had a long period when they didn’t appear on screen together, but recently they’ve collaborated on a few projects. They both appeared in Ridley Scott‘s The Last Duel, and are also attached to a film based on the McDonald’s Monopoly scam, although there hasn’t been much word about that for a while.
With HBO’s Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty debuting this year and already being renewed for a second season, and Netflix just releasing the Adam Sandler drama Hustle, there are plenty of basketball-related projects going around right now. We’ll wait and see where this one ends up in the canon.
#Peace.Love.AirJordan
