Trailer
Plot summary
A wrecking ball demolishes an abandoned building, and a magic lamp inside falls onto a boom box. The genie Kazaam decides to live in the box. Max Conner goes to school, faces bullies, and after he gives a gang of toughs a key that is of no value for the robbery they plan, the gang chases him. He slips into the abandoned building and bumps the boom box, releasing Kazaam, trapped in it for thousands of years. To stay free, Kazaam must grant Max three wishes, and he demonstrates his powers. On his way home Max sees his father and learns that his mother, Alice, plans to marry Travis O'Neil, a fireman. Max resents Travis and wants to find his real father, Nick Matteo.
Cast
- Brandon Durandas Vasquez
- Jake Glaseras Jake
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Kazaam (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film began with an offhand remark. Taken to meet Shaquille O'Neal at the NBA All-Star game, director Paul Michael Glaser was asked whether he knew of any film roles for him and answered, "He should play a genie".
- Glaser had ten and a half weeks to produce a screenplay and win a green light, because O'Neal was due back at basketball camp. The script was written in six and a half weeks and production began after ten.
- O'Neal told GQ in 2012 that he was offered $7 million to appear, on a film whose entire production budget was $20 million, and said that as someone from Newark who had always dreamed of making a movie he was never going to say no.
- Kazaam seeded a mass false memory. Large numbers of people insist they saw a 1990s genie film called Shazaam starring Sinbad, which never existed; Sinbad has denied it on Twitter, and one theory traces it to the genie costume he wore introducing a 1977 film on TNT in 1994.
- The phantom film went far enough that CollegeHumor released a parody Shazaam VHS trailer starring Sinbad as an April Fools' Day prank in 2017, casting him as a genie freed from his lamp by two children.
