The Jump Street franchise has been in a weird spot. After 21 and 22 were successful both critically and commercially, with the latter even making fun of the amount of sequels they would surely go on to make in a memorable closing credits sequence, there’s been very little talk about the franchise.
There was briefly word that Sony would attempt a 21 Jump Street/Men In Black mashup of sorts, but production is now underway on the new Men In Black movie starring Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, so that looks like a dead end. However, per Variety, Sony does have plans for the franchise after all.
The studio still has a long-developed female-led spinoff in the works that it started putting together all the way back in 2015. The script itself has gone through a journey, with Sony initially hiring Broad City writers Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, before bringing in Bob’s Burgers writers Lizzie and Wendy Molyneux to write their own version a few months later.
Then, they went back to the drawing board, simply bringing back 22 Jump Street scribe Rodney Rothman (who has also penned Sony’s upcoming Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse) who has written a draft of his own, and that is reportedly the version that has gotten Sony’s attention this year.
Rothman will reportedly direct as well, and the studio is now looking for two female comedians to send back to high school as undercover cops.
Columbia Pictures president Sanford Panitch told Variety: “We think that there’s something fun about keeping that irreverent spirit of Jump Street, but maybe having it be told through a female undercover cop point-of-view. We’ve had enough male buddy comedies. The script is really funny and has a freshness to it”.
This is exciting news, and probably a far better idea than the proposed mashup idea with Men In Black. Naturally the attention now turns to who the two female comedians will be that are chosen to star in the film.
#Peace.Love.21JumpStreet
