'Jump' stars adjusting reputations

Channing Tatum sinks his muscular frame into a restaurant chair and makes a request to the waiter, no menu necessary.

"I know it's the afternoon," Tatum says, turning his baseball cap from sideways to backward.

"But I need a beer." Changing a Hollywood reputation can work up a sweat.

Tatum and co-star Jonah Hill hope to shake up at least two reputations with the opening of 21 Jump Street, an adaptation of the 1987-1991 Johnny Depp TV series about undercover cops who infiltrate a high school.

The film marks one of the year's odder pairings and comes as the stars are battling their own stereotypes.

Hill flexes his screenwriting muscle on Jump, a movie he has tried to make for five years.

He is also coming off a best-supporting-actor nomination for his dramatic turn in Brad Pitt's Moneyball, a movie he says opened doors he never realised were closed.

For Tatum, who made his name with the fleet-footed Step Up musicals, Jump not only marks his first professional attempt at laughs; he is following The Vow, a surprise hit that collected $US118 million and made him one of the industry's most bankable romantic leads.

Both concede they're adjusting to their newfound reputations.

"Who knows, maybe we're at the height of our careers," Hill says over a cheeseburger and Diet Coke while picking at Tatum's fries at Cheebo, a Los Angeles fixture a few blocks from Hollywood High School.

"But we're randomly in this movie together and in this very unique position where good things are happening for us," Hill says.

"Now is the time to show what we can do and not be pegged as certain types of actors."

Though Hill and Tatum are coming off personal highs, Jump falls into Hollywood's riskiest category: TV adaptations.

While the genre can churn out monster hits such as the Transformers franchise, it also spits out movies like 2009's Land of the Lost, the $US100 million Will Ferrell train wreck that mustered $US49 million.

"I'm not going to lie and pretend I'm one of those guys who does a movie and doesn't care how it does" at the box office, Tatum says over a Guinness.

"Anything new is nerve-racking. I want this to do well. That's the only way you get to do something different in this business."

Jump, about two slacker cops investigating a high school drug ring, doesn't pay homage to the cop show so much as it lances the industry that loves the genre.

The movie begins with a joke about how unoriginal the film is and how fickle Hollywood marketing can be.

Though Tatum next appears in the action film G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Hill stars in the comedy Neighborhood Watch, the two are hoping to make a biopic of stunt man Evel Knievel.

"Wouldn't that be cool?" Tatum asks.

"He was a normal guy who did these amazing things," Hill chuckles

21 Jump Street is due to open in theatres on Thursday.

 

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