Channing Tatum Does Parkour

If you’ve seen the French movie “Banlieue 13″, then you probably saw the extreme sport of parkour done at its best. Parkour is a french deal where you basically use the urban environment as your personal obstacle course and maneuver through it using nothing but your body, trying to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible. In a word, it’s basically Jackie Chan stunts by French people. Anyways, Hollywood is getting in on the act, and is setting Channing Tatum, currently shooting “G.I. Joe” as Duke, to star in a movie about parkour.

Variety has more on the project:

New Line is planning production early next year on an untitled drama about Parkour — a free-jumping extreme sport in which agile practitioners run and jump from rooftops — with Richie Smyth making his feature helming bow and Channing Tatum to star.

Scripted by Kevin Lund and T.J. Scott, the drama revolves around a pair of jumpers who use their skills in heists.

Richie Smyth is a music video director, and is usually the case whenever music video directors make the jump to movies, the film usually looks really, really good. As for everything else? Well, these guys are used to shooting 4-minute movies, not 90-minute ones, so you have to cut them some slack. As in, the story will probably blow, but at least it’ll look good, right?

But wait, what’s this? Variety may not have much on the project, but IMDB.com does, including an actual plot synopsis:

A New York cop goes undercover in the world of Parkour, AKA free running, in order to track down a gang of sly bank robbers.

Basically, “The Fast and the Furious” without cars. Or, “21 Jump Street” without the bandana. And the movie is also called “Parkour”, apparently. Wow, way to get creative, Hollywood.

Still have no idea what parkour is? Here’s an introduction: