Jump Street’s Detectives Join the Men in Black
Leaked emails show that Sony plans to merge Jump Street and Men In Black.
At the end of 22 Jump Street, this summer’s sequel to the surprisingly great reboot of the eighties television show 21 Jump Street, the directors made fun of the idea that the film series could go on in perpetuity, imagining all the different undercover permutations that Jonah Hill’s and Channing Tatum’s characters could go through. Turns out, the joke was on them. In an email exchange leaked following the embarrassing company-wide hack earlier this month, Sony executives discuss the idea of combining their most successful new franchise with a struggling older one – Schmidt and Jenko are joining the Men In Black.
“jump street merging with mib i think that’s clean and rad and powerful,” wrote Hill in an exchange with Sony president Amy Pascal. Hill produced the second film in the Jump Street series.
Clean and rad and powerful, indeed. By combining their most successful stars (Tatum and Hill), with their most stylish and expansive universe (the retro-futuristic world of Men In Black), Sony would immediately revive interest in MIB while also giving the Jump Street series whole new ground to cover. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who directed The Lego Movie in addition to the first two Jump Streets, would possibly direct the new film. Given their visual style and quick-as-shit self-aware take on comedy, they seem like the perfect people to pit Hill and Tatum against planet-killing, time traveling, baddies with seven eyes and four legs.
A president of production admitted in an email that they “don’t have a script yet so we’ll be greenlighting the movie off the concept and the talent involved.”
After the runaway success of the Jump Street series, it was expected that Sony would literally green light any film starring Hill and Tatum, even if it was just them winking at each other for 90 minutes. This figures to be a lot better.
(h/t WSJ)
Photos by Columbia Pictures
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