Channing Tatum Says 23 Jump Street Has 'The Best Script' And Still Wants To Make It

Perhaps the best thing to come out of Hollywood's never-ending attempts to turn hit TV shows into movies is Phil Lord & Chris Miller's hilarious take on "21 Jump Street" starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. Taking a cue from the beloved TV series that premiered in 1987 with cast members like Johnny Depp and Richard Grieco, the 2012 action comedy follows the awkward but smart Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and dimwitted, popular star athlete Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) in their post-high school lives as they become unlikely friends and partners on the police force when they're assigned to an undercover assignment to bust a drug ring in high school. 

"21 Jump Street" has just enough meta sensibilities in the story to poke fun at Hollywood's formula of turning TV shows into movies without becoming a full-blown parody, and it also features delightful supporting turns from Brie Larson, Dave Franco, Nick Offerman, Rob Riggle, and Ice Cube as the undercover department's hilariously angry captain. Everything Lord & Miller put into the movie turned it into a hit, which prompted a rarity in Hollywood: a comedy sequel. 

"22 Jump Street" followed suit with the same self-aware mockery heading to college while still having a blast with the buddy action cop formula that made the original work so well. We were also treated to some fun story wrinkles for our duo, such as Schmidt unknowingly hooking up with the captain's daughter (Amber Stevens West) and Jenko striking up a cute bromance with the university's star quarterback (Wyatt Russell), not to mention a fun villain twist courtesy of "Workaholics" scene stealer Jillian Bell. 

With two great movies, including the sequel that made six times its budget, you might be wondering why we never got "23 Jump Street" — especially since Channing Tatum recently referred to the prospective follow-up as "the best script that I've ever read for a third movie." The good news is, Tatum still wants to make the movie. The bad news is that it still seems to be stuck in development.

Back in 2014, a hacker group known as Guardians of Peace leaked confidential information from various resources within Sony Pictures. Along with personal information about Sony employees and their families, emails between employees, information about executive salaries at the company, and copies of then-unreleased Sony films, the leak also included plans for future Sony films that were in development at the time. One of those movies was "23 Jump Street."

Before the leak, official entertainment news reports had already revealed development of "23 Jump Street," which would have brought back "22 Jump Street" co-writer Rodney Rothman (who went on to co-write and direct "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse") to script the sequel and "The Muppets" director James Bobin behind the camera. Lord & Miller would still produce, after directing the first two movies in the franchise. 

But it wasn't until the hack that we learned that "23 Jump Street" was actually being developed as a crossover with the "Men in Black" franchise. Titled "MiB 23," the movie would somehow bring Schmidt and Jenko into the secret government organization tasked with keeping Earth safe from the scum of the universe. This wasn't just a pipe dream; there were actual plans in the works to make "MiB 23" happen. 

At the time, it wasn't clear if the hope was to bring "Men in Black" stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones into the sequel, or if it would merely bring the "Jump Street" characters into the sci-fi universe. But thanks to Channing Tatum, we now know that the script was something special. 

Channing Tatum has been making the publicity rounds for the upcoming release of "Fly Me to the Moon" (watch the trailer here), and the subject of "MiB 23" came up. For his part, Tatum is hopeful they can still make the movie, telling ComicBook.com:

"There is a project that was written and it's still the best script that I've ever read for a third movie."

"Fly Me to the Moon" co-star Scarlett Johansson was also in attendance at the "Fly Me to the Moon" press junket, and thankfully, she asked what we all wanted to know: What happened? Tatum said, "It's just a lot of bureaucracy, kind of above the line stuff. It's really hard to get it made and we've been trying to get it done."

That echoes what Jonah Hill said about the project's prospects of being made back in August of 2016:

"They're trying to make all the deals, but it's kind of impossible with all the Men in Black stuff. The Jump Street films were so fun to make and the whole joke of them was they were making fun of remakes and sequels and reboots and then now it's become a giant sequel, reboot. It's almost become what we were making fun of and it's hard to maintain that joke when it's so high stakes."

Perhaps there were too many restrictions on what Sony was willing to do with the "Men in Black" franchise, making it difficult to utilize the same meta approach to the comedy that made the first two movies so good.

It's unfortunate that we don't have more positive news to share about the possibility of seeing "MiB 23" happen. At the very least, Tatum is still hopeful that it will come back around some day:

"You know what, I'm going to put some good juju out there and I'm going to say I would love to see '23 Jump Street.' I would love to do it with Jonah, and Jonah I know wants to do it. We would love to just get to go play again."

Honestly, it feels like Sony Pictures is leaving money on the table by letting this one just sit in development. Those first two movies were incredibly profitable, and with the dearth of comedies in theaters these days, this sounds like exactly the kind of laugh riot audiences are craving. Plus, let's not forget that the script for "23 Jump Street" was somehow going to make all of the fake sequels shown during the credits of "22 Jump Street" canon in the franchise's universe, and I'd love to see how they pull that off.

Let's all keep our fingers crossed that "23 Jump Street" or "MiB 23" or whatever they end up calling it actually gets in front of cameras at some point.