Ben Affleck And Matt Damon Are Teaming Up Again For An Untitled Nike Biopic About Sonny Vaccaro

Your favorite Boston boys are teaming up again to make a movie about Nike ... your favorite sneaker? Look, I don't know where you fall in the checks versus stripes debate. In fact, I don't know much about Nike at all — I've only read the first page of Phil Knight's "Shoe Dog" and I have no idea if I'll ever go back and finish the rest. But we can all at least sense the cultural relevance that Nike and specifically their Air Jordans carry, and that's exactly what Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are tapping into for their next project. And they're going all-in for this one. 

The as-yet-unnamed film will star Damon as Nike exec Sonny Vaccaro and Affleck as Nike founder Phil Knight, plus Affleck, who is certainly no stranger to the director's chair at this point, will also direct the film. While I'd be surprised if the movie didn't dig into Nike's legacy at large, it seems the plot will focus specifically on Vaccaro, who played a pivotal role in convincing Michael Jordan to sign with the brand in the '80s, thus spurning the global fashion and cultural phenomenon that is the Air Jordan.

Vaccaro's role in the momentous collaboration has been challenged in recent years. The ESPN 30 for 30 doc "Sole Man" certainly portrayed Vaccaro as a key figure, but the sprawling Jordan biopic series "The Last Dance" told a different story, and surprisingly didn't include any interviews with Vaccaro. Vaccaro himself has criticized his omission from "The Last Dance," which Jordan has challenged, so it's a real he said he said. Whatever the truth may be, we probably won't get it from Affleck and Damon's Nike movie, but that's okay. Sometimes you just want to see two Boston boys play wealthy sneaker tycoons. It's a specific mood, but it's still a mood.

The project, which is still being finalized, is itself a collaboration between Amazon Studios and Skydance Sports, whose president Jon Weinbach was a producer on "The Last Dance" and "Sole Man." The original script was called "Air Jordan" and was written by Alex Convery, but that story has now fallen into the hands of Affleck and Damon, who will be co-writing the script, just like in their recent film "The Last Duel," and more famously, "Good Will Hunting." It's nice to see that they're not waiting so long to collaborate again, unlike the real-life Vaccaro and Knight who, according to Vaccaro, are very much on the outs.