Twenty years ago Space Jam arrived in cinemas. The film saw everyone’s favourite Looney Tunes characters team up with basketball legend Michael Jordan in an attempt to stop some evil space aliens. The movie now arrives on Blu-ray just in time to celebrate its big Birthday. To honour this special occasion we’ve compiled a list of things that you probably never knew about the film…
1. Fancy a trip back in internet time? Well if you fancy seeing what a film website looked like back in 1996, Space Jam‘s original promotional website is still open for business. Check it out in all it’s glory here.
2. In order to keep their big sporting talent and star Michael Jordan happy whilst on set they actually built him a personal basketball court.
3. Space Jam marked the feature debut for Bugs Bunny’s female friend Lola. The perpetual bachelor finally met his perfect woman.
4. The soundtrack sold enough copies to go platinum six times. That’s a lot of copies of I Believe I Can Fly!
5. Speaking of I Believe I Can Fly, the song became R. Kelly‘s most successful song as well as reaching number two in the Billboard charts and winning three Grammys.
6. The names of the bulk of the Monstars are never revealed during the movie, but we’ve managed to track down their names:
- Orange = Pound
- Green = Bang
- Red = Nawt
- Purple = Bupkus
- Blue = Blanko
7. The concept for Space Jam came about after a series of hugely popular Nike ads in which Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan faced off against Marvin the Martian and his alien henchmen in a basketball game.
8. At the end of its box office run, Space Jam had accrued an estimated $230 million dollars internationally. That amount of cash makes it the highest grossing basketball film of all time.
9. The Tune Squad’s jersey numbers are:
- 1 = Bugs Bunny
- 2 = Daffy Duck
- 3 = Sniffles the Mouse
- 6 = Yosemite Sam
- 8 = Porky Pig
- 9 = Sylvester
- 10 = Lola Bunny
- 13 = Wile E. Coyote
- 22 = Bill Murray
- 23 = Michael Jordan
- 25 = Barnyard Dawg
- 33 = Foghorn Leghorn
- 53 = Elmer Fudd
- Heart = Pepe Le Pew
- ! = Taz
- ? = Beaky Buzzard
10. That scuffed basketball used within the movie is one of director Joe Pytka‘s most treasured souvenirs. In fact it’s so beloved that it is only real when being held by Jordan. Any instance of the ball in motion, or in the control by the cartoon characters, is actually an animated ball.
11. During the scene where Yosemite Sam confronts the aliens, there is a picture of Bosko hanging on the wall. Bosko was Warner Bros. first cartoon star.
12. Using green screens for movies is the norm these days, but back in the early nineties it was a relatively new method. Space Jam was filmed almost entirely in this way, making it one of the largest visual effects films of its time. Michael Jordan spent his days filming with a group of comedic actors moving around on their knees. This was to ensure the correct eye level between Jordan and his Looney Tune counterparts.
13. When flying towards ‘Moron Mountain’, if you look very closely you can see the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s hiding at the very right edge of the frame, floating in space.
14. Wayne Knight‘s publicist role, Stan Podolak, was originally envisioned for the likes of both Michael J. Fox and Chevy Chase. Both passed for varying reasons and Knight was eventually cast.
15. Evil alien Swackhammer was voiced by Danny DeVito.
16. The film gets meta at several points, with the players and actors referencing events of their actual lives. Our favourite is when Daffy Duck asks Bill Murray‘s character towards the end of the basketball game – ‘how did you get here?’ Murray responds with “the producer is a friend of mine”. Space Jam is produced by Ivan Reitman, who worked with Murray on Stripes and both of the Ghostbusters movies.
17. During the basketball game the aliens from Moron Mountain are disguised with Tom Baker‘s Doctor Who scarf.
18. Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd come to Bugs’ rescue as he is about to be attacked by a Monstar. The pair are holding gloves, clad in tuxedos. This is a clear reference to Pulp Fiction, Misirlou is even playing in the background to hammer the point home even further.
19. Space Jam was created in a time when all films got a video game adaptation. The game, which was released on Sega Saturn and the Playstation one, was a clone of NBA Jam and featured Jordan and the toon squad versus the monster aliens.
20. A sequel has been in the works for the last twenty years and it seems that now it may actually happen. Mr Fast and the Furious, Justin Lin, was attached to it as recently as May, with production rumoured to start soon.
Space Jam arrives on a snazzy twentieth anniversary edition Blu-Ray today.
