LeBron James’ disgusting China pandering is not going to save his Space Jam: A New Legacy, which is looking like a box office flop.
LeBron James’ Space Jam: A New Legacy died at the domestic box office this weekend with a pathetic $32 million opening (if that even holds). By comparison, all the way back in 1996, Michael Jordan’s original cleared $27.5 million on more than a thousand fewer theaters.
LeBron’s Space Jam sequel also cost $150 million just to produce, and that doesn’t include promotional costs, which easily puts it closer to $250 million.
Plenty of movies die a domestic death at the box office. However, they can still become profitable and declare themselves a worldwide hit, thanks mainly to China’s mammoth box office market, which has saved many Hollywood blockbusters from financial catastrophe.
Well, so far, the communist Chinese have said “no” to LeBron’s Space Jam sequel, and with it currently available on HBO Max, which makes top-shelf pirated copies easy to create, it’s highly unlikely a China opening can save it. But, of course, thanks to pirating, my guess is that everyone in China who wants to see Space Jam: A New Legacy already has.
China’s snub has to really sting social justice warrior LeBron James, the movie’s star and the NBA player who made a public fool of himself defending China’s Nazis back in 2019 after Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted out his support for Hong Kong protesters.
In response to Morey, LeBron said:
I don’t want to get into a feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand, and he spoke. And so many people could have been harmed not only financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually. So just be careful what we tweet and say and we do, even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that, too.
Do you believe that?
It was a breathtaking comment that not only exposed LeBron as a fraud when it comes to all his virtue-signaling about social justice but exposed him as a bottomless pit of greed.
How much more money does this guy have to make to be happy? How much better can he live? Is he really willing to see Hong Kong enslaved, just so he can have, what? One more private jet, one more mansion, one more hundred million?
The good news is that, at least as far as Space Jam, LeBron’s China suck-up failed to pay off, and now he has what will almost certainly be a box office humiliation on his hands. China really could have saved LeBron’s movie and chose not to.
Well, no one likes a suck-up, not even China’s communist Nazis.