24 Jump Street is now in the works at Sony Pictures, with Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill and Ice Cube in talks to return for a third film in the comedy franchise. Rodney Rothman is directing the project from a script he wrote with Hill and Meghan Malloy.
The news puts three of the series’ core players back in the frame for a movie that would extend a hit property more than a decade after the last entry. Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who co-directed the first two films, are returning to produce, along with Neal H. Moritz and Tatum and Hill with their partners Reid Carolin and Matt Dines. The first two Jump Street movies, released in 2012 and 2014, brought in more than $500 million worldwide.
That scale helps explain why a third installment remains a live idea even after Tatum publicly wondered in 2014 whether it could work. At the time, he said a sequel beyond college would feel like “a cop-out,” and questioned where the story could go after high school and then campus life. He also said the joke of making each film bigger did not work forever, even as a planned crossover with the Men In Black franchise became, in his words, “still the best script that I’ve ever read.”
The new title, 24 Jump Street, signals that Sony is treating the project as a continuation of the reboot series even though the last film was 22 Jump Street. The movies followed Schmidt and Jenko as undercover officers first in high school and then in college, and that formula turned the franchise into a rare comedy hit with box-office muscle. What remains unresolved is whether the current talks lead to signed deals, a production start or a release date.
