Remembering the Rad "Jump Street"/"Men In Black" Crossover That Could Have Been

It was too rad for this world.

Men In Black: International, an attempt to extend the Men In Black franchise into a fourth decade, flopped at the box office over the weekend.

In its first weekend, the flick managed to only gross $US28.5 million in the United States, becoming the first of the four MIB instalments to not open to more than $US50 million. It fared slightly better in Australia (comparatively speaking, because we small) with $AUD3.8 million.

Any way you slice it, however, the Chris Hemsworth-Tessa Thompson reboot doesn’t seem likely to generate its own trilogy, and its Rotten Tomatoes score of 24 per cent won't help. (Here at Student Edge, we gave it 2.5/5, contributing to its overall 'rotten' rating. Sorry 'bout that.)

It took just one weekend for The Hollywood Reporter to publish an autopsy on the big budget flop, revealing how producers and Sony studios pivoted from Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones to attempt a fresh new take.

And in that devastating report (revealing in-fighting on-set and multiple last-minute rewrites), THR reminded us of a MIB sequel that was too beautiful for this world; too perfect; too "clean and rad and powerful".

As revealed during the Sony hack of 2014, the studio had been considering a Men In Black/21 Jump Street crossover. For the third instalment of the Jump Street series, the cops played by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum would be recruited for the alien police; a perfectly meta and outrageous evolution for one of the best ever action-comedy franchises (and a nice way to breathe life back into the Men In Black saga, which is made up of one good movie and several bad sequels).

In leaked emails, Hill memorably called the idea "clean and rad and powerful", and in 2016, Sony attached director James Bobin to the project, proving it still had legs.

But according to THR’s new article published today, the reason it never came to fruition was because Sony asked both series' bproducers to "forgo rich producing deals". Those producers, by the way, included Steven Spielberg, Chris Miller and Phil Lord.

21 Jump Street producer Neal Mortiz allegedly "refused to compromise on his customary first-dollar pact", and without getting into the monetary mumbo-jumbo of Hollywood financing, all you need to know is that Sony wanted to keep the budget low (at $US110 million) with an aim of easy profitability. Handing over too much money to producers, just for permission to use the two brands at the same time, would risk that.

So, that’s how we ended up with Men In Black: International instead. Here's footage of Hill and Tatum reacting to its box office receipts.

Though it’s likely the end of the line for Hemsworth and Thompson’s Agents H & M, a Sony exec told THR, "Men in Black will be revisited again at one point, either as a series, as streaming, or as another movie."

Rad?

Header Image: Sony