Will Smith will produce a movie about Michael Jordan's year in the minors

Liz Roscher
·Staff writer
Will Smith might produce a movie about Michael Jordan’s year in the minor leagues. (Getty Images)
Will Smith might produce a movie about Michael Jordan’s year in the minor leagues. (Getty Images)

It still feels a little crazy that Michael Jordan, the best basketball player of all-time, retired in 1993 to become a baseball player. It’s been 27 years and it’s still one of the strangest and most surprising things to happen in sports. And now there just might be a movie about it.

According to The Tracking Board, it was announced last week that Will Smith and his production company Overbrook Entertainment will produce a movie about Jordan’s year in the minors, and there’s already a script ready to go. The script is titled “The Prospect,” written by Ben Epstein, and it focuses on Jordan’s journey in baseball as he comes to terms with his father’s death. Jordan’s father had dreamed of his son being an MLB player (as we all remember from “Space Jam”), which is one of the reasons why Jordan decided to play baseball.

There’s no guarantee that the movie will be made (films fall into and out of production all the time), but the script is well-regarded. It landed on the 2017 Black List, which is the yearly list of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.

Even though it would be fun to see Will Smith play Michael Jordan, that ship sailed at least 20 years ago. Smith is now 49 years old (seriously), and Jordan was just 31 when he was in the minors. Smith still looks pretty young, but even he couldn’t convince people he’s nearly 20 years younger than he actually is.

There’s no indication whether “The Prospect” will mention the strange occurrences that took place in 1993, when Jordan disappeared from the baseball scene to help a ragtag band of beloved animated characters avoid alien enslavement by playing in a basketball game with actor and baseball enthusiast Bill Murray.

Oh wait, that’s the movie “Space Jam.” Never mind.

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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher

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