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Channing Tatum is Stepping Up…To Making Juicy College Dramas

Photo: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic/Getty Images.
Forget your standard high school drama: Channing Tatum is bringing us collegiate problems.
According to Deadline, the Step Up star will produce a new TV pilot for Amazon that focuses on young adults attempting to navigate the wonderful, weird world of co-ed living. Titled College, the new potential series (also produced by Transparent creator Jill Soloway) examines the lives of six very different roommates all on the same university campus.
The possible show (Amazon has only ordered the pilot thus far) sounds like it could be a dramatic version of Freeform's beloved grown-ish, with students of different ethnicities, sexual and gender identities (a trans student is included in the mix), and economic backgrounds coming together to figure out their place in the world. It will also star some up-and-coming young actors, like Channel Zero's Amy Forsyth and Recovery Road's Jessica Sula.
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As for Tatum's production company Free Association's interest in the project — may we point to the college-set comedy 22 Jump Street, in which Tatum portrays an (adult) undercover cop who poses as a frat boy?
This isn't the first young adult-centered pilot that Amazon has in the works. The streaming platform has castaway drama The Wilds in contention as well as Panic, based on the novel of the same name by Lauren Oliver. Refinery29 has reached out to Tatum for further comment and details on his pilot.
While high school dramas are more prevalent than ever these days (in addition to Amazon's new pilots, Netflix has been a particular shining star in creating quality YA content), TV shows about college are fewer and farther between. Freeform has grown-ish, and the Ivy League-set Netflix series Dear White People comes to mind — but it's definitely less common for shows to portray university journeys than it is high school shenanigans.
Can College prove that the four years after high school are just as juicy? Let's hope so, because young adult fare shouldn't stop after senior year graduation.
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