One popular Japanese sports Manga series is Slam Dunk. I remember when I was watching this via free local broadcasting here in the Philippines, I need to hurry back home from school to catch the show as it is broadcasted here late afternoon on a weekday. I have enjoyed watching this series and now, they are trying to make a movie out of it, this makes a lot of fans excited.

Just so you know, according to Wiki, Slam Dunk is a Japanese sports manga series written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue. It tells the story of a basketball team from Shōhoku High School in the Shōnan area of Japan. It was serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from October 1990 to June 1996, with the chapters collected into 31 tankōbon volumes.

The manga was adapted into an anime television series by Toei Animation which aired from October 1993 to March 1996 and has been broadcast worldwide, enjoying much popularity particularly in Japan, several other Asian countries and Europe.

Slam Dunk has 170 million copies in circulation, making it the seventh best-selling manga series in history. In 1994, it received the 40th Shogakukan Manga Award for the shōnen category. In 2010, Inoue received special commendations from the Japan Basketball Association for helping popularize basketball in Japan.

A lot of fans worldwide are wondering if this series was completed, well, as per fandom.com, the anime premiered October 16, 1993 and ended March 23, 1996, with the anime series ending at the beginning of Inter High, right after Shohoku played a practice match against a combined Shoyo and Ryonan team.

One other thing just to refresh your memory, if you remember Haruko, Sakuragi’s love interest, a girl who is very naive and dense, she was unable to realize Sakuragi's love for her until the end of the manga when the latter confessed his love for basketball to her, unfortunately Sakuragi and Haruko did not end up together in Slam Dunk.

Last January 7, 2021, Slam Dunk's author Takehiko Inoue announced on his Twitter that the series will receive a new anime film that listed Toei Animation as its production studio. Then, on August 13, 2021, Inoue was announced as the screenwriter and director of the film, along with other production staff members such as Yasuyuki Ebara as character designer/animation director and Naoki Miyahara, Katsuhiko Kitada, Toshio Ohashi, Yasuhiro Motoda, Fumihiko Suganuma, and Haruka Kamatani as unit directors. On July 1, 2022, five new character posters were installed in theaters across Japan. On the updated posters, Inoue is listed as a character designer with Yasuyuki Ebara.

The creator of the original manga, Takehiko Inoue, will be directing the film and writing the script alongside Toei Animation.

Shown below is its official teaser trailer.

This 2022 movie of Slam Dunk is not the first Slam Dunk movie, back in 1994, a series of films were produced by Toei Animation. Four movies in total were released with the last going live in June 1995. Now, Inoue is ready to bring the series back for another big-screen outing, and it will give a new generation the chance to discover what makes Slam Dunk so iconic.

Cheerio!