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When the 21 Jump Street reboot was first announced, nobody expected it to become one of the most influential comedies of the 2010s. Its sharp writing, self-aware humor, and the chemistry between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum turned the reboot into a cultural hit. One so successful that it immediately spawned an equally beloved sequel in 22 Jump Street.
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I think you idiots are perfect.
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"-That's great. Well, where should we report to?" "-Down on Jump Street. 37 Jump Street. No, that doesn't sound right.
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This is 21 Jump Street. It's a hilariously completely off-the-wall success story
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and no one expected the film to work, let alone become a fan favorite and launch a potential
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franchise. And yet it did. "-Next year, we'll probably just be right back across the street just next door.
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"-Let's not get ahead of ourselves." "-We're not ahead of ourselves. We're right next." But here's where Hollywood came up with an idea so crazy, it could have changed everything
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Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill almost starred as their 21 Jump Street characters in a Men in Black
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film. We don't want to do the same thing. We want to burst through our ceiling. You're gonna find
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another ceiling and you gotta bust through that one. And you just gotta keep hammering ceilings
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There's something to be said for the underdog, and that's what 21 Jump Street was when it first
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rolled into theaters in March of 2012 and pulled in over 200 million dollars at the box office
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Nobody gave a s*** about the Jump Street reboot when you first came on, but you got lucky
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So now this department has invested a lot of money to make sure Jump Street keeps going
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Despite launching a highly successful sequel that pulled in 330 million, none of these accomplishments are the capstone on this creative endeavor. The greatest accomplishment
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Schmidt and Jenko mastered might be the fact that it almost broke completely new ground in Hollywood
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In the proposed threequel, our twin protagonists would have been the first characters from one
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franchise to take over another. And what does that mean? Well, in 2016, Channing Tatum and
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Jonah Hill's characters almost starred in the highly beloved Men in Black series
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Traffic school. Military school. Scuba class. Dance academy. Yes. Finally, something I'm amazing at
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Remember, at this point in time, Men in Black was somewhat rudderless. The first film released in
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1997 was a cultural phenomenon, the second film did okay, and the third film was welcomed warmly
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at the box office but wasn received with open arms by the public With Will Smith essentially saying he was done with the franchise Sony had a property that the general viewing public was aware of but no main star or character to continue the franchise with Enter the strangest and also weirdly appropriate pairing of characters and franchise maybe ever
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What if we actually went into the Secret Service and like tried to protect the White House
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I think I'm saying we can read- I don't think that would work. I'm gonna ask you to stop talking
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I thought it was a pretty good idea. Tentatively titled MIB-23, the film would have seen Schmidt and Jenko being conscripted
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into the shadowy alien defense force as chronicled in the previous extraterrestrial-themed Will Smith vehicles
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The film was also going to be directed by James Bobbin of 2011's The Muppets
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In an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, we learned from Phil Lord
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Basically, the idea was that Joan and Channing a thing happened that got them embroiled into the world of Men in Black
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and they ended up sort of teaming up to sort of stop an alien takeover
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While details of the franchise experiment are scarce, one key element of the story that has been revealed through interviews with the cast and prospective crew is that the boys would be wearing powder blue suits the whole time
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The rank of black suit was something that had to be earned, so the whole time Schmidt and Jenko would be disgruntled that they were relegated to powdered blue suits doing alien cleanup work no one else wanted to engage with
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Not too long after this information leaked, however, Collider asked Channing Tatum about
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the possibility of the Gonzo sequel ever making it to the screen. I still think it can work
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I really do. And if Sony would ever really like can figure out the producer sort of like problems and
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you know, that are inherent with that film, it's a big overhead on that movie. It's that last part that truly sank the film, the budget, but probably not in the way you're thinking
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No more money in the budget. What? I thought we had Cate Blanchett. Cate Blanchett
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I mean, carte blanche. That one. The creative risk of merging two franchises, surprisingly
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wasn't the big hurdle for the studio, nor the idea of bringing back these beloved characters
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and putting them into a scenario that was distinctly foreign to the last time
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the audience saw them. It's not even the fact that Channing Tatum is a highly paid actor
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or that the film would require a large budget for visual effects It was the money going to the producers Because you see this proposed film would have had to be signed off on both Steven Spielberg and Neil Moritz
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two long-running power players who have accrued a hefty purse for their creative services
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And according to Tatum, no one was willing to take less money to get the project off the ground
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Once everybody's kind of like not willing to come off their fee, you end up having a producer fee that's essentially
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maybe more than the actual budget of the movies. Building a movie with an unprecedented high concept
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and these massive paychecks obviously was too much for Sony to commit to
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So they took a step back and decided to retool the project as a continuity-free soft reboot
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titled Men in Black International. You coming? The world's not going to save itself
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Are you saying that you need me to save the world? Uh-huh. Not so
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An obvious byproduct of studio meddling, creative cowardice, and too many cooks in the kitchen
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it's very apparent that the film at one point had a great idea for a script
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that was then sanded down into nothing. The finished product is neither fish nor fowl
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It's a mid-budget studio summer would-be blockbuster with nothing to say and nothing to push back against
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It's a purely commercial enterprise, and it was received as such. The film made $250-ish million at the box office
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off of a budget of around $110 million. Basically, a moderate success, but not a grand slam
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Oops. Sorry. Hi. No, just catching up on my daily meditation. Of course, there's still no 23 Jump Street
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So it kind of makes you wonder, was the secret sauce of making both these franchises truly work combining them
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It would be the first time a film series has taken components of another and truly incorporated them
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Sure, you have Freddy vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator, even what the MCU has done
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but there's something unique about this MIB 23 approach that just instantly sets itself apart from everything else
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The fish-out-of-water structure of the Jump Street films, surprisingly, ports over well to almost any elevated or exaggerated universe
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The characters are lovable idiots, and their boneheadedness could easily be used to mine
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comedy out of interacting with the alien species at the center of the story However taking existing and beloved characters
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and making an original sequel for them with an existing franchise seems like something that
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would have been done by now, right? But it hasn't. Can you imagine? Dexter co-starring in a Knives
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out movie. Or RoboCop popping up in the Back to the Future sequel. Look, the risk for it to be
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bad is pretty high, but you'd think that someone would have tried it, even as just a marketing stunt
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The practice of having characters show up in different TV shows is actually fairly common
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Even Steve Urkel was on Full House, believe it or not. How annoying could one kid be
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Honey, I'm home! The process of sharing beloved characters was a semi-constant on the small screen at one point
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but this practice never fully transitioned onto the big screen. Today, the film appears to be pretty much dead
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Tatum is off in Marvel land trying Gambit. The name's Remy Labo. The day I bleh blow
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But you can call me the Gambit. It's been a while since I've seen Sling Blade. Hit me again
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And Jonah Hill is writing and directing his own projects. I will say it came very close to happening
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Wow. Very, very close. So are any of them still being developed? It's not not being developed
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The film is pretty much shelved indefinitely, but that doesn't stop Tatum from discussing it any chance he gets, which honestly is very sweet
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But it's by far and away the best third sequel to any franchise that I've ever read in my entire life
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It's cool that he obviously really believes in this harebrained idea. And look
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he was campaigning to be Gambit for the better part of 15 years
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"- They call me the Gambit." "- Do they? Are you sure he didn't just really, really want them to
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but it never quite worked out?" Maybe we'll all be enjoying MIB-23 in another half decade or so. Anything is possible
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"- You know how long I've been waiting for this? Who am I about to make a name for myself here?