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| Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum in 21 Jump Street |
Channing Tatum pairs up with Jonah
Hill in Columbia Pictures' new action-comedy “21 Jump Street,” a recent No. 1
box-office hit in the U.S.
In
the film, Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) were enemies in high school who
became unlikely friends in Police Academy. While they may not be the best cops
on the beat, they have a chance to turn it around when they join the police
department's secret Jump Street unit, run by Captain Dickson (Ice Cube). They
trade in their guns and badges for backpacks and use their youthful appearances
to go undercover.
Trouble
is, teenagers today are nothing like what they were just a few years ago, and
Schmidt and Jenko discover that everything they think they know about being a
teenager, from sex to drugs to rock and roll, is all wrong. More importantly,
they both find they are still dealing with all of the adolescent problems they
didn't address in their own teen years - and both will have to confront the
terror and anxiety of being a teenager again and all the issues they thought
they had left behind.
The
idea for breathing new life into “21 Jump Street” as a feature film began with
Stephen J. Cannell, who had co-created the popular television series with
Patrick Hasburgh back in the day. One of the most venerable, talented, and
prolific television writer-producers, Cannell’s many credits – from “The
A-Team” to “The Rockford Files” to “The Greatest American Hero” to “Wiseguy,”
among many others – earned him a legion of fans and admirers, especially among
his colleagues in entertainment.
One
such admirer is producer Neal H. Moritz, who has earned his own reputation as a
go-to producer of action films. “He was incredibly charismatic – I loved
everything about him,” says Moritz of Cannell, who died in 2010 at the age of
69. Moritz recalls their initial meeting: “We started talking about ’21 Jump
Street’ and I told him how much I had loved that show. He mentioned that he was
working on turning it into a movie, that he was a fan of my movies, and he
asked me if I would like to get involved with the project. Are you kidding?”
“21
Jump Street” ran for five seasons, the first four on the nascent Fox network,
providing them with one of their first hits. Starring Johnny Depp in his first
major role, the drama about young-looking cops going undercover in high schools
scored high ratings in the key demographic of young viewers that the
then-fledgling network was beginning to court.
Moritz
and executive producer Tania Landau immediately saw the promise in updating
that premise, but it wasn’t until Jonah Hill became involved that the project
really came into focus. “It’s a great concept,” Landau says. “Two young-looking
cops go undercover at a high school, and against all odds, bust a drug ring. We
make a lot of action movies, so that was how we saw the direction for this
project, too. But things changed when we had lunch with Jonah; he suggested
doing it as an R-rated action comedy, and suddenly it all fell into place.”
Hill
says that it started with a simple question: "What would it be like to
relieve the most important time period of your youth... high school. You think
you have all the answers that you didn't have then, but then you get back there
and realize those answers are all wrong. You then immediately revert back to
the insecurities and problems you had when you were seventeen."
Moritz
and Landau immediately sparked to Hill's fresh take on the material, and
Cannell, too, thought it was a great spin on the “Jump Street” series.
“21 Jump Street” will be distributed in the Philippines
by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.
Visit http://www.columbiapictures.com.ph for trailers, exclusive content and free
downloads. Like us at www.Facebook.com/ColumbiaPicturesPH and join our fan contests.
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