Sony really wants to get its female-led 21 Jump Street spinoff right, and to aid in that goal, the studio has brought Bob’s Burgers duo Lizzie and Wendy Molyneux aboard to pen a new script for the project. Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, the team behind Comedy Central’s brilliant Broad City, are already writing a separate draft for the spinoff, but Sony execs liked a pitch from the Molyneux sisters, so now Aniello and Downs have some competition.
This sort of dual-track development means that Sony will be able to pick whichever script it feels is best for the project or (more likely) intermix the best ideas and scenes from both. Supporting two different teams of scribes also speaks to Sony’s determination to make the female 21 Jump Street spinoff as good as it possibly can be – which is certainly understandable, given both that the first two movies, starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as undercover cops masquerading as students, have grossed more than $530 million worldwide, and that female-led vehicles are blossoming this summer with The Age of Adaline, Pitch Perfect 2, Spy, Trainwreck and Inside Out all already or on track to be huge moneymakers.
Simultaneously, a third installment in the franchise, titled 23 Jump Street, is being planned, with Rodney Rothman writing the script. Given that 22 Jump Street essentially blew every sequel to the movie out of existence in its raucous credits sequence, how Rothman intends to craft a threequel is beyond me, but that project is still happening.
21 Jump Street isn’t the only franchise Sony wants to open up for female-led installments. It’s taking a similar approach to the Ghostbusters franchise, with Paul Feig directing a 2016 spinoff to star Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong and Leslie Jones.
Plot details on the female Jump Street spinoff are being kept under wraps, but Sony has options. It can either recruit Dakota Johnson and Rye Rye (who played Schmidt and Jenko’s fellow Jump Streeters in the last films) to star, or tap two prominent comic actresses to lead, likely dependent on what direction the scripts provide.