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Warner Bros. Considered Making a Skate-Based Space Jam Sequel with Tony Hawk
Like Rocket Power and the X-Games, Skate Jam would have been a time capsule of the early 2000s.
Of all the alternate realities parallel to our own, the dimension we really want to visit is the one where Warner Bros. Pictures made a skate-based Space Jam sequel with Tony Hawk entitled Skate Jam. No, we're not kidding — the professional skateboard talked about the scrapped project on social media back in 2019.
Tony Hawk Reveals He Nearly Starred in Space Jam Sequel
"In 2003, I was requested to meet with Warner Brothers about doing a film tentatively titled Skate Jam," wrote Hawk on Twitter, sharing an illustration of himself shredding on a half-pipe alongside Taz and Marvin the Martian. "They were bringing back Looney Tunes with Back In Action & then wanted to start on my project immediately. A week later Back In Action bombed & Skate Jam was shelved forever."
For More on Space Jam:
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'Space Jam: A New Legacy' pays tribute to original but is more of a 'standalone' sequel, says voice of Bugs Bunny
Move over, Goon Squad! Space Jam's original Monstars are back in 'Teen Titans GO!' crossover
"That's the one that got away," Hawk confessed during a 2023 appearance on Hot Ones. "They presented the idea to me, that it would be Skate Jam — much long the lines of Space Jam with all the Looney Tunes characters ... Coincidentally, I was leaving for Australia to work on an independent film there and they said, 'We want to meet you at LAX because we want to finalize all the details.' So they met me at a restaurant in the middle of LAX and said, 'This is happening. Here are the script ideas, here's the poster.' I remember thinking, 'When is this gonna happen?' They were like, 'When you get back we're gonna finalize all the details.' I go, 'Awesome!' I get on the plane, go to Australia. In the meanwhile, they released Back In Action ... and apparently it didn't do the numbers 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 even calling anymore. It was just gone. It was a bummer."
A spiritual follow-up to Space Jam, Looney Tunes: Back in Action was directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins) and followed stuntman D.J. Drake (Brendan Fraser) as he went on an adventure with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to stop the Acme Corporation (led by Steve Martin's Mr. Chairman) from turning humanity into monkeys. While reviews for the movie were mixed-to-positive, it was a bomb at the box office, making only $68.5 million against an $80 million budget.
Across the board, 1996's Space Jam is considered to be the superior mix of live-action and Looney Tune characters. Helmed by Joe Pytka, the film revolved around Michael Jordan helping the cartoons defeat a group of talent-stealing aliens in a game of basketball, lest they be enslaved at an intergalactic amusement park.
Of course, a traditional sequel to Space Jam (subtitled A New Legacy and starring LeBron James in the central role) was released in 2021.
Space Jam is now streaming on Peacock.
Originally published Jan 5, 2019.
