Will Smith to Produce Film About Michael Jordan's Baseball Career Titled 'The Prospect'
Will Smith is set to produce a biopic about the baseball career of one of the greatest athletes of all time, Michael Jordan. Titled "The Prospect," the movie will reportedly chronicle Jordan's shift from basketball to baseball at the height of his career with the Chicago Bulls back in the 90's.
"The Prospect" has been in development for a while, but it is only now that it is starting to get some traction. The script for the biopic is reportedly being written by "Happyland" and "You Get Me" writer Ben Epstein, and Smith, who is Jordan's close friend in real life, is producing.
Jordan reached the peak of his basketball career in 1992 when he led the Chicago Bulls to their third consecutive NBA championship. The following year, however, his father was murdered and he decided to quit basketball. In 1994, he tried playing professional baseball by signing with the Chicago White Sox, but he only played on the minor league team, the Birmingham Barons. After being unsuccessful in baseball for a year, Jordan decided to sign back up with Chicago Bulls in 1995, and that's when he led the team to its best regular season record yet with three more consecutive championships.
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Jordan's athletic career was very well chronicled in the 1996 Disney film "Space Jam," but it focused more on his feats in basketball. Unlike previous films and documentaries that highlighted Jordan's basketball career, Smith's "The Prospect" will look into his time with the Chicago White Sox's Birmingham Barons, focusing on his first retirement from the NBA in 1993 until he returned to the league in 1995.
For years, "The Prospect" was part of the 2017's Black List, a list of all the unproduced screenplays for the year. The biopic does not have a release date yet but it is expected to be in production soon.
