Lord & Miller Call Cancelled 21 Jump Street/Men in Black Crossover Movie a "Missed Opportunity"

Before Spider-People from across the multiverse crossed over in Phil Lord and Chris Miller's animated Spider-Man: Spider-Verse saga, there was MIB 23. The proposed Men in Black-Jump Street crossover was to mash the two Sony franchises together and act as a threequel to Lord and Miller's 21/22 Jump Street movies about undercover cops Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum), who would have been recruited to join the top-secret organization established to monitor alien activity on Earth. But Hill and Tatum were not destined to become galaxy defenders guarding against extra-terrestrial violence: the project was neuralyzed, and Sony relaunched MIB without stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in 2019's Men in Black: International.

 "It was a cool idea. I think most likely that opportunity has passed, but it was very fun. It was crazy. It was a crazy thing to try," Miller told Rolling Stone in an interview promoting Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. "One of those things where, if it works, it's incredible. And if it doesn't, you can take down two franchises. And so you know, the pressure was very high."

He continued: "And so it was a missed opportunity. But there are a lot of those in life."

The Lego Movie filmmakers previously confirmed the MIB/Jump Street mashup "came very close to happening." Sony officially announced the crossover at Las Vegas' CinemaCon in 2016, revealing a logo blending the Men in Black and Jump Street logos together as MIB 23. In 2022, Tatum explained that the James Bobin-directed movie pitched by Hill died on the vine because it involved too many expensive producers from both franchises.

"There's [Men in Black producer Steven] Spielberg, [Jump Street producer] Neal Moritz, and [Men in Black producer] Walter Parkes," Tatum said last year. "They're giant producers, y'know, on that. And then once everybody is kinda like, not willing to come off their fee, you end up having a producer fee that is essentially, maybe more than the actual budget on the movie." 

"I still think it could work, I really do. And if Sony would ever really, like, do the hard work and figure out the producer problems that are inherent with that film, I think we can still do it. But right now, I don't know why, they're just not motivated to do it. It's a big overhead on that movie," Tatum continued, calling the MIB 23 script from 22 Jump Street writer Rodney Rothman "by and away the best third sequel to any franchise that I've ever read, in my entire life. I would not say that if I did not really believe it, because I don't like being wrong, like, specifically about that."

According to Men in Black series producers Laurie MacDonald and Walter F. Parkes, the undercover action-comedy series and the sci-fi action series are "not very compatible." The proposed MIB 23 "didn't quite get 'there," the producers said, despite an idea that Lord and Miller "really adored."

"The idea was Jonah and Channing, a thing happened while they were doing their medical school adventure that got them embroiled into the world of Men in Black and that got them teaming up to stop an alien takeover type of thing," Miller previously told the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "It was very funny, it was crazy trying to manage these two franchises and not drive them both into the ground seemed like a real challenge."