Sony’s 21 Jump Street bucked the trend of reboots, by taking a creative and imaginative route to updating a hokey 1980s television show for modern audiences. Sony knew it had a unique specimen on its hands early on, and began sequel development before the first movie even opened in theaters.
The 21 Jump Street followup is set for an unspecified release date in 2014, as was announced by Sony during its presentation at the 2013 CinemaCon in Las Vegas. Costar/writer Jonah Hill and his 21 Jump Street co-writer Michael Bacall started to work on the script last year, in order to get the ball rolling faster.
21 Jump Street ended on a note that setup further adventures with underachieving Officers Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum), now that the misfit duo have “graduated” from high school and are headed undercover to pass themselves off as college students.
There’s obvious potential in that scenario for many a stereotypical joke about niche university culture; plus, with Hill and Bacall on script duty, you know Schmidt and Jenko will get up to wild drunken party escapades (see: Bacall’s story for the found footage high school raunch-com Project X). Hopefully, the jokes about fraternities and 20-something New Age hippies will come with that inspired madcap twist that made the previous movie a clever mix of action-comedy and satire.
Much of the credit for that belongs to 21 Jump Street directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who are not yet confirmed for the sequel. The pair are currently slaving away on their new 3D animated project, Lego: The Movie (with Tatum rumored to voice Lego Superman), but should be finished around the time production on the next 21 Jump Street installment needs to begin
Then again, the duo passed on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (which is the sequel to their successful 3D ‘toon), so maybe they won’t be so interested in making another 21 Jump Street feature after all. We’ll keep you posted and let you know what happens.
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Look for the 21 Jump Street sequel (21 Jump Street 2? 22nd Jump Street?) in theaters in 2014.
