Cinematic crossovers might be all the rage these days, but it sounds like one off-the-wall team-up is no longer in the cards.
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In a recent interview with Empire Magazine (via Yahoo Movies), Men in Black producer Walter Parkes confirmed that the planned crossover with the Jump Street franchise has officially been scrapped.
“We gave it a shot.” Parkes explained. “It turned out to be an impossible match-up.”
The crossover, which was theoretically called MIB 23, had been in the pop culture consciousness since 2014, when the infamous Sony email hack hinted that it would be a possibility. But as time went on, even actors involved with the franchises weren’t as optimistic.
“I had the idea,” Jonah Hill, who starred in the first two Jump Street films with Channing Tatum, said back in 2016. “But I doubt that movie will get made.”
“It’s too complicated,” Hill continued. “They’re trying to make all the deals, but it’s kind of impossible with all the Men in Black stuff. The Jump Street films were so fun to make and the whole joke of them was they were making fun of remakes and sequels and reboots and then now it’s become a giant sequel, reboot. It’s almost become what we were making fun of and it’s hard to maintain that joke when it’s so high stakes.”
But thankfully, this crossover being scrapped doesn’t seem to be standing in the way of either franchise returning to the big screen. Men in Black International, which stars Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth, is headed into theaters later this year. And a female-driven Jump Street spinoff is in the works, with Akwafina and Tiffany Haddish in talks to star.
According to Variety, the focus has since shifted to “finding the right female comedians to send back to high school with badges”. A script for the female-led spinoff has been in development since 2016, with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse‘s Rodney Rothman set to write and direct.
“The north star for us is wanting our movies to feel different, not done before, not recycled,” Panitch explained. “Because of the volume of streaming content out there and television content, we spend a lot of time around here talking about a movie’s theatricality and making sure we believe it achieves cinema worthiness.”
What do you think of the Men in Black/Jump Street crossover essentially being no more? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Men in Black: International will debut in theaters on June 14th.
