Nobody was quite ready for the runaway success of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, but based on the box office returns it appears that there are a lot of people who might want to hear what Dwayne Johnson has to say about a potential follow-up. The Rock took to Instagram to thank the fans of Welcome to the Jungle for making it the biggest domestic movie ever for Sony, and after doing so, he let those same fans know that work has already begun on a direct sequel, which is likely good news for the entire cast, except possibly one of them. Kevin Hart could be in trouble. As Johnson explained...
As producer of Jumanji, we are working on the sequel right now and speaking of giving the audience what they want, I'm going to go ahead and kill Kevin Hart's character off for good and everybody will be happy.
As one might expect, Johnson is having some fun at the expense of Hart, who he is now looking to co-star with for the third time. Although, if the avatars of the next Jumanji have the same weaknesses as they did this time around, Kevin Hart's character better hope there isn't too much cake around, or he could end up dead after all.
This isn't the first we've heard that a Jumanji sequel was likely, but is confirmation that it is being actively worked on. The word was Sony was eyeing a 2019 holiday season release, which would put the new Jumanji up against Star Wars: Episode IX, something that seems crazy, until you realize that Welcome to the Jungle was able to hold its own against Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It's all the more impressive that Sony was able to see their biggest movie alongside such competition. It's clear that even Dwayne Johnson wasn't expecting it to do as well. Check out his full comments below.
The question then becomes what form a new Jumanji would take. The game was seemingly destroyed at the end of the recent film, although, clearly the game has some kind of a mind of its own. It's also never been stated that the version of the board game unearthed by Alan Parrish, that became the game cartridge in Welcome to the Jungle, was the only copy of the game. We don't know where it originally came from, so who knows what the history of it truly is.
