2K Sports apparently has Spike Lee’s back more than Apple and A24.
Spike Lee has returned to the NBA 2K games, in the middle of the director facing other issues with his latest movie.
2K Games just released the trailer for NBA 2K26’s MyCareer. They confirmed that Spike Lee is involved yet again:
Today, 2K dropped the official trailer for NBA 2K26 MyCAREER: Out of Bounds, a cinematic journey that showcases this year’s ambitious storyline. Narrated by the award-winning director Spike Lee, the new trailer teases an unexpected journey where ambition meets grit, reflecting the IRL grind of today’s basketball generation.
MyCAREER, the narrative-driven mode, features the equivalent of five motion pictures worth of storytelling and content, but the ending is up to each MyPLAYER. Players can choose their own path where every move they make, both on and off the court, will shape their rise to stardom.
What Does Spike Lee Have To Do With NBA 2K?
2K Games hired the famous director to work on MyCareer for NBA 2K16. He wrote and directed this narrative mode and is even listed as its producer. Lee even went as far as to instruct the actors who did performance capture for the game, aside from the voice actors.
If you never played this mode, you might be surprised to learn that fans actually didn’t like Lee’s MyCareer. Coming from the movies, Lee decided to tell his own story from beginning to end. These meant players did not get to make choices to branching storylines like they did in earlier games.
Nonetheless, this was a landmark moment for 2K Sports. NBA 2K16 sold over 4 million copies in its first week. It remains the fastest selling game in the franchise. Even if Lee’s work was divisive, it definitely helped drum up publicity for it and brought it to the spotlight.
Apparently Video Games Respects Spike Lee More Than Hollywood Now
We don’t know the extent of Lee’s involvement in NBA 2K26’s MyCareer. The trailer implies that players will get to make more choices than they did in NBA 2K16’s MyCareer. He may have been a producer or consultant at best. But with this trailer, 2K Games seems to have given Lee more respect than Hollywood is doing right now.
Lee actually spent most of 2024 filming his latest movie, Highest 2 Lowest. This is a crime thriller inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s crime film High and Low, as well as Ed McBain’s 1959 novel King’s Ransom.
Highest 2 Lowest is not unapproachable arthouse fare. It boasts an all-star cast, including Jeffrey Wright, ASAP Rocky, Ice Spice, and Denzel Washington in the lead role.
This film was produced by Apple Original Films, who chose to do Lee dirty. They’re opening the movie in only 200 theaters for 2 weeks. Highest 2 Lowest then hits Apple TV+ in September 5.
Apple also treated Martin Scorsese this way for his film Killers of the Flower Moon, before changing their mind. As the producers, Apple gets to decide how they sell and distribute their films.
But it’s a clear contrast to 2K Games working to bring NBA 2K26 to as many platforms and reach as many players as possible. We don’t know how many other filmmakers noticed this contrast. We know of at least one creative who moved industries because of this.
Not everyone may like NBA 2K26’s MyCareer, in the same way that critics are saying that Highest 2 Lowest could prove divisive. But at least Spike Lee gets the opportunity to give fans that experience in the best way they can get it, than he’s getting with his movie.
In the meantime, you can watch the trailer below.