How can a franchise that is about to have 15 movies in its catalog and has been Disney IP for decades actually call itself an indie film? Because there ain’t no rule that says a movie about a dog playing basketball can’t be an indie film.
Indeed, “Air Bud Returns” is about to be the 15th entry in a franchise that, by the time of its release, will be 30 years old. But “Air Bud Returns” is now an independent film, and even though 12 of those movies were released straight to video, it is also aiming to be a theatrical play and a box office hit.
The original “Air Bud” from 1997 was released by Disney and made $23.1 million at the box office, which is about $47.4 million when factoring in inflation. But the second film — “Golden Receiver,” in which Buddy the dog switches from basketball to football — made just $10.2 million. The subsequent films, which have seen Air Bud play soccer, baseball, and volleyball, and were then eventually spun off into the “Air Buddies” series about golden retriever puppies who talk, have super powers, go to space, and twice save Christmas, were all released straight-to-video.
It sounds like the perfect opportunity for a reboot would be to reintroduce a new generation to “Air Bud” through streaming, but “Air Bud Returns” will in fact open in theaters on January 22, 2027. And the filmmakers believe it’s a theatrical movie for the same reason that the first one was 30 years ago.
“The kids who watched the original ‘Air Bud’ were 10 years old, and you’re a parent now. Now it’s the kids and their parents introducing them to ‘Air Bud,’” director and Air Bud Entertainment CEO Robert Vince told IndieWire as part of a CinemaCon event in the Barco Cinema space. “Somebody took you to the theater, your parents, and 1776903972 they’re grandparents. The timing has lined up perfectly from a demographic point of view, and we knew that and we were watching it.”
Vince has heard NBA players say “Air Bud” was an inspiration for them, there was an “SNL” sketch with Sydney Sweeney featuring Air Bud, and John Oliver has devoted an insane amount of time talking about the franchise to the point that he originally wanted a part in the new film. Oliver joked that, between the global search for Air Bud and a crowdfunding investment campaign in support of the film, Vince not only had no dog but also had no money. Sounds like an indie filmmaker to us.
“It became so loud, we could tell that the timing was right,” he said.
Vince is touting “Air Bud Returns” as not another sequel, rather a theatrical re-imagination of the franchise, but it is very much in the “lega-sequel” category effectively remaking the original. The new film exists in a universe in which not only does the original Air Bud exist, but in which a movie about that dog’s life was made, i.e. the original “Air Bud.”
In the 12 minutes of footage we saw from the film at CinemaCon, the new Buddy walks past a statue of the original Buddy. When that Buddy meets a young boy in a wheelchair who has also lost his parents, they together watch an old VHS tape of the original film and become inspired to recruit Buddy for the school basketball team. It’s even the same Timberwolves team uniform Buddy wears, there’s another grumpy clown trying to get Buddy back, and there is yet another referee who says “there still ain’t a rule that dogs can’t play basketball.”
Vince said his lead dog in “Air Bud Returns” is an incredibly well-trained “movie star” type dog, but it’s “not as easy to train as you might think” to teach them how to play basketball. The original Air Bud was not trained by a professional, instead it was Kevin DeCicco who first got the dog onto David Letterman’s “Stupid Pet Tricks,” and he was more of a “party dog” who knew how to do these unique tricks you see in the first film.
“He had this really innate ability. He was one of a kind. He was a savant,” Vince said. “We could never replicate that ability with one dog.”
‘Air Bud Returns’Kailey Schwerman
What makes all this an indie is that “Air Bud Returns” will not be released by Disney, but is now a Cineverse joint, better known as the folks who brought you the “Terrifier” franchise of horror films. “Air Bud Returns” is the first in the company’s foray into family-friendly films after cornering that niche horror market for movies about murderous clowns (“Air Bud Returns” thankfully doesn’t have Art the Clown chasing Buddy in his car).
Cineverse’s whole thing is that, instead of doing wide marketing with big ad buys, it turned “Terrifier 2” and “Terrifier 3” into hits by leveraging its network of other streaming services and podcast channels with very minimal P&A spend and hyper-focused marketing.
The difference here is that “Air Bud Returns” is a four-quadrant family film that needs to be spread wider, but Cineverse chief motion pictures officer Yolanda Macias told us that “Air Bud” represented IP with a built-in fanbase, and their goal is to identify other family-friendly IP that scratches that same nostalgic itch. Their only goal then is to make the theatrical release into an event, with CinemaCon being the first step on that journey, which also includes Buddy taking a trip to Cannes.
Cineverse’s journey with “Air Bud Returns” started before production began, with the distributor leading the charge of the search to find the dogs that would portray Buddy in the film. The team received over 5,000 video submissions of people with their golden retrievers before settling on two (the one we met at CinemaCon was named Roscoe). For them, that’s enough of a vote of confidence that there’s an audience here that believes a film like this can succeed at the box office just as much as they can believe a dog can ball.
“That is the heart of America saying we want Air Bud to return home,” Macias said.