With the first two installments earning over $1.7 billion at the box office and winning strong notices from both fans and critics, Jumanji is comfortably Sony’s most lucrative property that isn’t derived from Marvel Comics.
In fact, Welcome to the Jungle and The Next Level rank among the studio’s ten highest-grossing titles ever, and they’re the only two that aren’t part of either the James Bond, Spider-Man or Venom franchises, so you can guarantee that the wildly successful reboots are far from being done.
Kevin Hart said another Jumanji was definitely happening, although Karen Gillan admitted that she didn’t know anything about it, but producer Hiram Garcia has teased in an interview with ComicBook that it’s happening sooner than we might think, potentially right after star Dwayne Johnson and director Jake Kasdan finish up on Amazon’s holiday-themed blockbuster Red One.
“We have a really fun pitch. We’re actually getting ready to take it to Sony to let them hear what we’ve been cooking up. We’ve got a big vision for the next Jumanji movie. So we’re fired up for that. We’re taking it in soon. And obviously the goal is sometime after… Jake is doing Red One for us, so that is going to be next up. But sometime after Red One comes out, Jumanji is going to be on deck. I feel like we’ll have everything ready by then and we’ll be able to get into that third installment. It’s going to be good, man. It’s really, it’s fun and it’s smart. It’s a really smart take. And Jake has been spearheading that, and he’s brilliant.”
There’s definitely an audience for more Jumanji, with the video game-inspired action comedies proving to be much better and a whole lot more enjoyable than they really had any right to be, with the central quartet of Johnson, Hart, Gillan and Jack Black generating an undeniable chemistry. Sony are very light on marketable IPs that don’t revolve around Spider-Man, so the boardroom were always going to push for more outings to keep milking that cash cow.