“There’s nothing cool about Nike,” Marlon Wayans’s character George Raveling says within the first trailer for Air, which reunites finest mates and frequent collaborators Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. That’s what folks thought again in 1984—not less than, till the flailing shoe model met a promising rookie named Michael Jordan.
Affleck directs and stars as Nike cofounder Phil Knight within the movie, alongside Damon as Nike govt Sonny Vaccaro—two of the lads behind a landmark deal between Jordan and the corporate’s basketball division. The movie facilities on the pursuit of that partnership, which led to the event of Nike’s beloved Air Jordan sneakers. Though that is the primary time Affleck has directed Damon, the pair gained the Oscar for finest unique screenplay for his or her Good Will Searching script in 1998 and starred in 2021’s The Final Duel, which they cowrote with Nicole Holofcener. Air is the primary challenge to emerge from Artists Fairness, the manufacturing firm Affleck and Damon shaped final 12 months.
Newly minted EGOT winner Viola Davis stars as Deloris, Jordan’s mom and vocal advocate. She’s joined by her real-life husband, Julius Tennon, as Michael’s father, the late James Jordan, along with Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser, Chris Messina as David Falk, Chris Tucker as Howard White, Matthew Maher as Peter Moore, and Gustaf Skarsgård as Horst Dassler. In a maybe unusual twist, it seems that Michael Jordan himself is not going to be a significant character.
The movie is getting a significant push from Amazon, together with a $7 million Tremendous Bowl spot this weekend. Air has additionally secured the biggest theatrical launch within the studio’s historical past on April 5 earlier than it hits Prime Video at a later date.
