“He was my childhood hero,” says Hill. “When we worked on the first one, the first thing we wrote down was that Ice Cube – the guy who wrote ‘F— Tha Police’ – should play the police captain. It’s a true childhood dream to be able to hang out with him.”
Cube relishes the role. “I’m the meanest, nastiest captain of them all,” says Ice Cube. “He hates everybody equally. You’ve seen nasty ‘Angry Black Captains’ – I want to be the top notch.”
While the audience saw only one side of Dickson in the first “21 Jump Street,” moviegoers are treated to a more well-rounded character in “22 Jump Street.” (Sort of.) “We see him in a lot of different lights,” Cube explains. “He’s a little different with everybody, but he’s still mean, nasty and angry. Even his wife is mean and nasty.”
“A lot of the comedy, for us, comes between the interplay between Jonah’s Schmidt and Dickson,” says Lord. “Schmidt is a guy who seems like he should be low status to Dickson, but considers himself an equal. That’s really funny to us.”
“Schmidt is that annoying kid in high school, thinking that today is going to be the day he’s going to break the ice,” says Cube. “There’s no breaking the ice with Dickson.”
Of course, when it’s Ice Cube playing the role, some of that admiration and intimidation comes from real life. “It’s how we all feel about Ice Cube,” says director Phil Lord. “He’s iconic. He’s a great director, writer, producer, rapper, and actor – we all admire him. We’re dying for him to think we’re cool. We can all relate to the Schmidt character.”
In “22 Jump Street,” big changes are in store for officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) when they go deep undercover at a local college – after making their way through high school (twice). But when Jenko meets a kindred spirit on the athletic team, and Schmidt infiltrates the bohemian art major scene, they begin to question their partnership. Now they don’t have to just crack the case – they have to figure out if they can have a mature relationship. If these two overgrown adolescents can grow from freshmen into real men, college might be the best thing that ever happened to them.
One of the most bankable actors in cinematic history, Ice Cube’s films include star turns as a conflicted teen in “Boyz N The Hood,” a greedy soldier in “Three Kings” and an elite government agent in “xXx: State Of The Union.”
Most recently, Cube found major success with the box office hit “Ride Along,” which his company Cube Vision produced. The film was #1 at the box office for three consecutive weekends and was the highest grossing movie in history over Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. “Ride Along” has been greenlit for a sequel.
Opening across the Philippines in June 18, “22 Jump Street” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.
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