It seems like the new year is a good time as any to reminisce. Tony Hawk took to Twitter on Saturday to share a moment from his career that may be unknown to many.
“[I]n 2003, I was requested to meet with Warner Brothers about doing a film tentatively titled Skate Jam,” Hawk said. “They were bringing back Looney Tunes with Back In Action & then wanted to start on my project immediately. A week later Back In Action bombed & Skate Jam was shelved forever.”
With the tweet, the pro skater also shared an image of a cartoon version of himself skating alongside the cartoon characters Tasmanian Devil and Marvin the Martian.
Hawk also discussed the project in an interview posted on Medium in 2016.
“I was meeting with Warner Bros. We had a handshake deal. They had offered me money and we were going to bring back the Looney Tunes characters in the form of a skate movie like Space Jam… they were so excited about the project, and so excited to get it going. They met me at LAX restaurant when I was flying to Australia for a week to shoot a movie — a different movie.”
He continued, “It was all happening and we were going to put the whole deal together when I got back. From the time that I left to the time I got back, they had premiered the movie with Brendan Fraser — what’s it called? Back in Action? That flopped so hard that they said, ‘We’re not doing Looney Tunes stuff,’ and that was it.”
Looney Tunes: Back In Action used Space Jam's live action-animation mix, but with Brendan Fraser instead of Michael Jordan. The movie had nowhere near Space Jam's success; it flopped and failed to return on its $80 million budget. By that measure, it was probably in Warner Bros.' best interest to cut Hawk’s movie, too.
Perhaps Hawk has been reminiscing about the nixed movie project because last month, he released his latest video game with the same name: Tony Hawk's Skate Jam.
