“You can’t miss what you never had” or so the saying goes, but that doesn’t help us from really wanting the mash up of 21 Jump Street and Men in Black that we were promised five years ago.
21 Jump Street (2012) and 22 Jump Street (2014), starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are already considered comedy classics and people have been clamouring for another movie, to round out the trilogy, for a long time now. And at one point, instead of getting 23 Jump Street, we were going to get MIB 23.
Men in Black is a series that has spanned over twenty years. Starting with Men in Black (1997), we then got Men in Black II (2002) and Men in Black 3 (2012). When the proposed crossover between the buddy-cop comedy set in the real world and the buddy-cop comedy set in a science-fiction world never came to fruition, we instead got Men in Black: International (2019) starring Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson. And the less said about that, the better.
Now, Jump Street directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, has been speaking to the Happy. Sad. Confused podcast about why the mash up never came to fruition.
“There was, believe it or not, a Men In Black-Jump Street crossover script that was very funny and very crazy, that we really adored,” says Miller.
“One of my favourite ideas is that in the Men in Black, the black suits were like martial arts belts and that you had to work your way up to black, and that they (Tatum and Hill’s characters) were issued powder blue suits,” says Lord.
“It was basically the idea that it happened while Jonah and Channing were doing their medical school adventure and that they got embroiled into the world of Men in Black. They ended up teaming up to stop an alien takeover. It was very funny, very crazy but trying to manage these two franchises and not drive them both into the ground seemed like a real challenge,” says Miller.
If you’re a fan of Men in Black, check out our guide to the best science fiction movies and if you’re a fan of 21 Jump Street, check out our guide to the best comedy movies.