Tatum, Hill and Ice Cube in talks for 24 Jump Street
24 jump street is in the works at Sony Pictures, with Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill and Ice Cube in talks to return for a third 21 Jump Street movie. The project brings back the franchise’s core names after the first two films cleared $500M worldwide and set up a sequel path that had been discussed years ago.
Tatum and Hill return to the center
Channing Tatum is not just circling the film as a performer. He is also producing 24 Jump Street, alongside Jonah Hill, Reid Carolin and Matt Dines, which keeps two of the franchise’s leads tied to the project’s business side as well as its on-screen future. Hill is also producing.
Rodney Rothman is directing from a script he wrote with Hill and Meghan Malloy. Phil Lord and Chris Miller are returning to produce after co-directing the first two movies, and Neal H. Moritz is also back as producer. That lineup keeps the film close to the team that built the earlier entries rather than handing the property to a new creative group.
The $500M franchise base
21 Jump Street arrived in 2012, followed by 22 Jump Street in 2014. The films followed Schmidt and Jenko as they went undercover in a high school and then on a college campus, a run that helped the franchise cross $500M worldwide. That box-office total is the clearest reason a third film has stayed alive in development talk.
Tatum was already skeptical about another sequel in 2014. He said, “I feel like that would be a cop-out,” and added, “College was the obvious next step for us. We had to go there. I don’t know what the next step is after college. Do we go and take down Enron? Or the government in D.C.? I feel like it’s all redundant.” He also said, “The big running joke of the second movie is this is just going to be bigger … than the first time. I don’t know if that joke works three times, so we’ll see.”
What Sony has assembled
The new film keeps the title 24 Jump Street rather than restarting the property from scratch. That matters because the franchise is not being rebuilt around new leads; it is being assembled around the same names that made the first two films work commercially. Variety was first to report the news.
Tatum also said in 2014 that a planned 21 Jump Street crossover with the Men In Black franchise was “still the best script that I’ve ever read.” That idea never became the next step, and the current project now gives Sony a more direct route: bring back the core cast, keep the original producing team, and try to turn a dormant comedy property into another theatrical release with an audience already proven at scale.
