Air Bud Returns Acknowledges Original Dog Buddy Is Canonically Dead

Air Bud is dead. Long unrecorded Air Bud!

The archetypal footage from Air Bud Returns was screened astatine CinemaCon connected Tuesday, revealing that this movie – the 15th introduction successful the long-running franchise – is simply a bid reboot acceptable wrong the continuity of the earlier films.

The footage reveals that the canonical aureate retriever Buddy of the archetypal Air Bud films is dead, arsenic acknowledged by a memorial statue of him with a hoops that’s been erected successful the municipality of Fernfield.

The canine protagonist of Air Bud Returns is simply a stray aureate retriever who lives successful Fernfield. Jacob Morgan (Aydin Artis) – an teen lad with a carnal disablement that requires him to usage a wheelchair – comes to instrumentality attraction of this stray, whom helium calls Buddy.

Jacob is the lad of 1 of the kids from the squad depicted successful the archetypal Air Bud movies. Jacob has moved to his father’s hometown of Fernfield aft his dada died. Jacob is besides the grandson of a erstwhile pro hoops subordinate named Jake Morgan (Edwin Lee Gibson), who becomes portion of the unit of Jacob’s schoolhouse hoops team, the Fernfield Timberwolves.

Jacob watches aged videotapes of the archetypal Air Bud and his dad’s squad with his caller dog, who is inspired to go a hoops subordinate similar his namesake. For the franchise’s shaper and Air Bud Returns writer-director Robert Vince, acknowledging the decease of the canonical Buddy “makes full sense” for the communicative he’s telling here.

“I deliberation that now, much story-wise, I'm ever wanting to crushed our stories successful reality, right? I cognize it's not reality, but grounded successful reality. So that has a mythical benignant of magical whimsicalness to it, but not fairyland,” Vince told maine successful a chat backstage. “For me, families privation to person thing grounded successful reality. And that's ace important to our storytelling and however we grip this. We don't instrumentality ourselves seriously, but we instrumentality the movie earnestly successful immoderate ways. We don't effort to dumb it down. We effort to marque it thing they tin larn from it.”

“I person grandkids, I got 5 of them now, and my grandkids travel over, and they look astatine our aureate retriever, they go, ‘How agelong is Brody going to live?’ I said, ‘He'll person a large life.’ But immoderate day, that dog's going to die. So if I lied to them and said, ‘Oh, this dog's present forever.’ So that's conscionable my constituent of view. And I anticipation the assemblage appreciates the honesty that we effort to enactment successful our movies.”

One tin lone ideate however Air Bud enthusiast John Oliver volition respond to the revelation that the OG Air Bud is dead. Not that the Last Week Tonight host’s episode-long ribbing of the Air Bud franchise and the casting hunt for a caller canine to play the rubric relation bothers Vince much.

“I really find John Oliver's wit astir Air Bud benignant of fun. Yeah, he's poking amusive astatine america and each that benignant of stuff,” Vince said. “So helium made amusive of america for, ‘Oh, they don't person a dog?’ Well, no, what we did was we recovered the champion canine retired there, and utilizing the champion tools possible, which is societal media, and a canine playing hoops is not casual to find. And I didn't privation to usage CGI. I wanted it to beryllium real. And judge me, it's not casual to do. The archetypal Air Bud was a 1 of a kind.”

Vince added, “My constituent is, I deliberation wit successful a tasteful mode is great, and adjacent poking amusive astatine you is good. So John Oliver, I person nary occupation with astatine all.”

Air Bud Returns opens successful theaters connected January 22, 2027.