If 21 Jump Street was a big-screen reboot that made in-movie jabs at reboots, and 22 Jump Street was a sequel that poked fun at sequels, 22’s closing montage of sequel posters was a delicious send-up of elaborate franchise road maps spitting out increasingly derivative iterations. Now those increasingly derivative iterations will actually take place within the reality that is Jump Street, according to /Film.
Speaking at WonderCon during a panel for their Fox comedy Last Man On Earth, Jump Street franchise producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller made it clear that those credit bumpers weren’t just a fun, disposable gag; they were real. “The sequels are canon,” Lord said, confirming both the gag sequels’ canonical status, and the fact that 21 Jump Street films should be looked at as having a canon, a device usually reserved for detail-oriented people to suck the fun out of things like Star Wars, Babylon 5, and The Lord Of The Rings. Lord and Miller only teased that the sequels would factor into 23 Jump Street, without clarifying how Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill would become certified scuba divers, trained firemen, and accomplished mariachi performers.
Despite Tatum calling the necessity of a third movie into question (and simultaneously announcing the third movie’s running gag), 23 Jump Street seemed unavoidable, and is now confirmed, because while Jump Street films may mock sequels, studio heads still take strong box-office returns pretty seriously. Until plot details are announced, we are left to speculate about how the various Jump Street schools will become canon, and what is left in store for detectives Schmidt and Jenko. 23 Jump Street: Crippling Student Debt seems like a logical next step, but doesn’t sound very funny.