With action comedy 21 Jump Street launching this weekend to lashings of critical praise and (according to early estimates) a healthy first place at box offices in America, it’s really not that surprising that Sony would want to strike while the iron is sizzling and lock in a deal with story writer/co-star Jonah Hill and screenplay man Michael Bacall to craft a sequel.
While they’ve been thinking up ideas for a while now, it’s not known whether Hill will stick to bashing out the treatment with Bacall then letting him take script duties this time, but given how well that arrangement worked out for the first movie, it seems only natural that they’d work it that way again.
And while no acting deals are in place yet, we figure the studio will have no trouble recruiting Channing Tatum to return as Jenko to Hill’s Schmidt, who has been garnering some of the highest praise of his career for his comedy chops. We’d hope Ice Cube and possibly Nick Offerman might also return, but since not a word of the script is in place yet, it’s too early to know for sure.
A bigger question is whether directing duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller might also come back, though their Jump Street success might ironically be what keeps them out of the sequel, as they’re hard at work on the Lego movie and have plans for other projects. It will all depend on timing.
Bacall is in demand at the moment, since he’s already developing a sequel to **Project X and writing the Tropic Thunder spin-off focused on Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman character.