Nike’s successful signing of Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal in the mid-1980s helped launch the brand into the biggest in the world of sports apparel. According to Deadline, Ben Affleck is set to direct and play Nike co-founder Phil Knight, teaming up with longtime friend and collaborator Matt Damon, who will star as Sonny Vaccaro, in a drama about the fledgling company’s pursuit of the young Jordan.
Affleck and Damon are working off of a script titled Air Jordan, penned by screenwriter Alex Convery, which was named to 2021’s Black List, a renowned list of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays.
No actor has been publicly attached to the project to play Michael Jordan at this time.
The film will depict Vaccaro’s relentless pursuit of Jordan, a move that helped vault Nike from a distant third-biggest shoe company into the monolith it is today.
Both Hollywood stars are well known as diehard Boston sports fans and have experience making sports films. Affleck played a construction worker-turned-high school basketball coach in 2020’s The Way Back and stars as the bartender uncle of JR Maguire in ’21’s The Tender Bar, based on the memoir of the same name by longtime sports writer, journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner J.R. Moehringer.
Damon starred in 1998 poker drama Rounders, 2000 golf drama The Legend of Bagger Vance and ’19 racing drama and Best Picture nominee Ford v. Ferrari as famed automotive designer Carroll Shelby.
