Alex Convery claims ‘Jaws’ inspired Michael Jordan’s role in ‘Air’
Since the very beginning of their illustrious careers, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have been close friends and have collaborated on several iconic projects – especially Good Will Hunting. Their latest collaboration is titled Air, a sports biopic which explores the formation of Air Jordan and how basketball legend Michael Jordan signed with Nike.
During a recent interview with Variety, screenwriter Alex Convery said: “Either this was going to get made, and it would be my first produced movie, or it’s all going to fall apart. Back to square one. To really do this responsibly, you need Michael to say yes. Ben said it in the first meeting, ‘We will not do the movie if Michael doesn’t want to do it.'”
Convery also compared Jordan’s role in the film to the shark in Jaws: “The less you show of him, the more powerful the idea of him is… To Ben’s credit, from the first time we sat down, he was like, ‘You have to pick one or the other.’ The minute the headline comes out of which actor is going to be playing Michael Jordan that will be the only story of the movie.”
The writer added: “Knowing the Jordan family gets their due at the end, I just always felt that would shine through more than the idea of executives at Nike. It’s the Jordan family that has the final victory. The way Ben puts it is Dolores suddenly becomes the protagonist. The guy you thought you were rooting for the entire movie suddenly becomes the guy you’re rooting against.”
Directed by Affleck (who also stars as Phil Knight), Air has already started garnering acclaim from critics and basketball fans. Amazon also decided to gauge the audience response by giving the film a theatrical run before distributing it via their Prime Video platform.
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