SPIDER-VERSE Writers Discuss Crossover Movie 21 JUMP STREET & MEN IN BLACK ‘It Was a Crazy Thing to Try’

Spider-Verse writers and producers Phil Lord AND Chris Miller he once tried to make a crazy cinematic crossover that would bring together Via Salto 21 AND Men in black. The film would have had a title MIB 23 and there’s no doubt it would have ended up being a wild movie!

The first information about the film leaked in 2014 after that massive Sony Pictures hack. The film was officially announced at CinemaCon seven years ago, but that obviously never happened.

The film would have centered on undercover cop Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) and followed them as they are recruited to join the top-secret organization set up to monitor alien activity on Earth.

During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lord and Miller opened up about the film, with Miller saying:

“It was a cool idea. I think that opportunity most likely passed, but it was a lot of fun. It was crazy. It was a crazy thing to try. One of those things where, if it works, it’s amazing. What if it works if it doesn’t, you can bring down two deductibles. And so you know, the pressure was really on.”

He went on to say that the project was “a missed opportunity. But there’s a lot of that in life.” A movie like this would have been great, and speaking about why that didn’t happen, Channing Tatum previously said:

“There is [Men in Black producer Steven] Spielberg, [Jump Street producer] Neal Moritz e [Men in Black producer] Walter Park. They’re giant producers, you know, on that. And then once everyone is like, not willing to give up their fee, you end up with a producer fee that is essentially, maybe more than the actual budget of the film.”

But Tatum still thinks the film could work. He said, “I still think it could work, it really. And if Sony really did the hard work and figured out the producer issues that are inherent in that film, I think we still can do it. But right now, I don’t know why, they just they’re not motivated to do it. It’s a big overhead for that movie.”

Tatum also said the MIB 23 script from Via Salto 22 writer Rodney Rothmann it was “roughly the best third sequel to any franchise I’ve ever read, in my entire life. I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t really believe it, because I don’t like being wrong, for example, particularly on That.”

Lord spoke about the unproduced project in a previous interview, saying:

“There was, believe it or not, a Men In Black/Jump Street crossover script that was very funny and very crazy that we really loved. Basically, the idea was Jonah and Channing, something happened while they were having their med school adventure that got them drawn into the world of Men In Black and made them team up to stop some kind of alien takeover. It was a lot of fun, it was insane trying to run these two franchises and not sending them both down felt like a real challenge.

Miller went on to share one of the concepts embedded in the story, saying, “One of my favorite ideas was the Men In Black, the Black Suits were like martial arts belts that you had to work your way up to black and [the Jump Street guys] men’s blue suits in black were issued.

James Bobini (The Muppets, Alice Through the Looking Glass) was trying to direct and I would have loved to see the movie happen. While Tatum thinks the project is still possible, he doubts it will ever be resurrected at this point.