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Michael Jordan's Larger-than-Life Air Time Hits Theaters Today

Aired May 5, 2000 - 1:23 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANDRIA HALL, CNN ANCHOR: Fans of basketball legend Michael Jordan can now see their hero in mammoth proportions.

NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: Jordan is being taken to the max, IMAX. Can you imagine he's enough just on the regular screen.

HALL: He is enough, really, what at six feet six?

ALLEN: Right, CNN's Rick Lockridge tells us His Airness is the leading man in an amazing IMAX movie.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICK LOCKRIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He has always seemed larger than life, so maybe it's surprising that no one thought of putting Michael Jordan on an 80-foot-tall IMAX movie screen before Chicago Bulls fan Don Kempf did.

DON KEMPF, CO-PRODUCER, "MICHAEL JORDAN TO THE MAX": I was sitting in an IMAX theater here in Chicago, and sitting in the back row, and all of a sudden I had this vision of Michael Jordan eight stories high, on-screen. tongue flying out, coming right at me.

LOCKRIDGE: Three years later, that vision has been transformed into a 45-minute IMAX movie, "Michael Jordan to the Max."

The film is an unabashed celebration of Jordan's life up to and through his last title run as a member of the 1998 NBA Champion Chicago Bulls.

Superfast IMAX cameras, which gobble six feet of 70-millimeter film per second, capture some of Jordan's most memorable moves as you've literally never seen them before.

BOB COSTAS, SPORTSCASTER: You see it at a different angle and with a depth that television can't provide and most film you see can't provide. It's just, it's overwhelming.

LOCKRIDGE: Special effects include a scene where Jordan appears to hang in mid-air while en route to the basket, a green screen sequence that required 100 still cameras to click in perfect synchronization, a technique known as bullet-time photography.

MICHAEL JORDAN: I was very impressed. Modern technology is amazing. I was just happy to be a part of it. That was one of my favorite parts of the movie, actually.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LOCKRIDGE: Jordan and his wife, Juanita, attended the world premier of the movie last night at Chicago's Navy Pier IMAX, and the movie opens nationwide today, including here at the National Air and Space Museum here in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian, where a large and enthusiastic crowd is behind me waiting to get in into the 1:30 p.m. showing. There have been two shows so far today, both of them sell-outs.

And interestingly, the Smithsonian has abandoned its long- standing policy of only showing aviation and space-related movies for this one instance, the Jordan movie. Now I guess you could argue that Michael Jordan's celebrated hang time qualifies as aviation in its own right. But they are going to break the rule for this one movie, and the reason of course is money. They expect this film to be the top grossing IMAX movie of all time.

And along the way, they also anticipate the movie will bring people into IMAX and into the museum that might not otherwise have come in. So Jordan, of course, known for his scoring and his defense throughout his 13-year NBA career, now getting a very nice assist as well -- Natalie, Andria.

HALL: You never think that the guy can top himself, but you know, with this impressive technology, how impressive was the budget, Rick?

LOCKRIDGE: Well, you would think they had spent a fortune on it. But in fact, they only spent about $8 million on this movie, which I guess is a lot of money, but not by Hollywood standards. They are spending more than that, about $10 million, to promote it nationwide.

ALLEN: What next for Michael Jordan? My goodness. Thanks, Rick Lockridge.

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