A New Legacy is rightfully being compared to Ready Player One and the LEGO movies after Warner Bros. dropped the first Space Jam 2 trailer. The 2018 big adaptation of Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel had a huge amount of Warner Bros. cameos for fans to geek out on, but the Space Jam sequel may contain even more cameos from even weirder parts of the studio’s vast vault, as evidenced by the short trailer. Prepare for multiple viewings of the Space Jam 2 trailer.
The Iron Giant makes a return in the Space Jam 2 trailer, looking a lot like it did in Ready Player One. He’s joined by King Kong, who is currently destroying the weekend box office with his good buddy Godzilla. Cheetara from ThunderCats can be spotted behind a ton of Hanna-Barbera characters, including The Flinstones, Yogi Bear, Jabberjaw, and more. Obviously, the Looney Tunes characters are all in attendance, including Yosemite Sam, who appears to misunderstand what LeBron James means by “shooting baskets.”
In some of the basketball crowd shots, one can easily spot Mama Fratelli from The Goonies standing next to some White Walkers from Game of Thrones, Mr. Freeze from Batman & Robin, multiple versions of the Joker, including the iconic TV series take by Caesar Romero, and Jack Nicholson’s version from 1989’s Batman. There’s even multiple versions of Penguin standing on the sidelines with Agent Smith from The Matrix franchise.
The characters from Scooby-Doo are also there, as is The Mask, and the violent gang of Droogs from Stanley Kubrick’s iconic A Clockwork Orange, along with some War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s unclear why exactly two very violent gangs are standing on the sidelines with Pennywise from IT, but Warner Bros. was clearly going for the gusto here.
The Wizard of Oz is represented in the Space Jam 2 trailer more than once. We see LeBron James soar past the planet of Westeros from Game of Thrones, before going past an Oz planet. Later in the trailer, we can see a Flying Monkey cheering in the crowd, while the Man with the Yellow Hat from Curious George gets lost in the background. It’s not clear, but it even looks like Pinhead from the Hellraiser franchise is taking in some cosmic basketball from the cheap seats.
Warner Bros. has gone all out with the Space Jam 2 trailer, which is giving fans something to dissect. However, there has already been some blowback on social media as a result. For the most part, people seem to be having a lot of fun figuring out all of the cameos in the trailer, which will likely lead to many more when the long-awaited sequel arrives in theaters later this year. Like the rest of Warner Bros.’ 2021 releases, Space Jam 2 will be available to stream on HBO Max for free. You can check out some of the cameos from the sequel above and below, thanks to Ben Menkler’s official Twitter account.