’24 Jump Street’ Just Revealed A Buried Secret About Its Long Lost Script, And Fans Are Losing It

The ‘Jump Street’ franchise has spent more than a decade teasing a follow up that never quite materialized, leaving fans of Schmidt and Jenko wondering if the undercover duo would ever get a proper third outing. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are back on the beat with ’24 Jump Street,’ with the latest sequel in the works at Sony Pictures alongside Ice Cube, who is also in talks to return. It marks a rare bit of momentum for a project that has lived in development limbo since the second film hit theaters.

For years, the assumed title for that third movie was ’23 Jump Street,’ a number the franchise itself joked about in its own end credits. A third installment of the successful ‘Jump Street’ film franchise had been in development at Sony for more than a decade, with Tatum once describing the script for the since scrapped ’23 Jump Street’ as the best script he had ever read for a third movie. That version was reportedly designed as a crossover with another Sony property before quietly falling apart.

Now Empire has confirmed exactly what happened to that abandoned draft, and it turns out the studio did not throw it away so much as put it in a drawer. Empire’s exclusive post revealed that ’24 Jump Street’ is picking up where that old ’23 Jump Street’ draft left off, with Miller explaining the situation directly. “There was a script that was made years ago. The dust has been blown off of it, and it’s being rewritten right now,” Miller said.

The unusual jump in numbering has an equally cheeky explanation behind it. According to Lord and Miller, ’24 Jump Street’ is currently in active development, with director Rodney Rothman leading a rewrite of a script that has been sitting unused for years, and Lord addressed the skipped number himself during the pair’s chat on the Empire Podcast, joking that the earlier draft deserved acknowledgment even though its number was retired for good.

Rodney Rothman, who directed ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,’ will helm the new film from a script he wrote alongside Hill and Meghan Malloy, with Phil Lord and Chris Miller returning as producers alongside Neal H. Moritz. Lord and Miller made their live action directorial debuts with ’21 Jump Street,’ which centered on officers Schmidt and Jenko going undercover as high school students to infiltrate a drug ring, while Ice Cube played their blustery superior, Captain Dickson.

The original films were massive hits for Sony, giving the franchise plenty of reason to keep chasing a third chapter. ’21 Jump Street’ surpassed two hundred million dollars at the global box office, and ’22 Jump Street,’ which sent the pair undercover in college, collected an even bigger three hundred thirty one million dollars worldwide. Those numbers help explain why Sony never fully let go of a third movie, even after the ’23 Jump Street’ version stalled out.

With a dusted off script now getting a fresh pass and a returning cast circling the project, ’24 Jump Street’ finally feels like it has real momentum behind it after years of false starts. Whatever survived from that old ’23 Jump Street’ draft, fans are already speculating about what jokes and storylines might have carried over, so what do you think deserved a second life in this rewrite?