Jumanji 3 has an official title: Jumanji: Open World.
Stars Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black made the announcement tonight while closing out Sony‘s CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas with the unveiling of a first trailer for the threequel.
The trailer opens with a computer repair man played by Lamorne Morris coming into the home of a character played by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Marin Hinkle. Therein, he finds an old video game console. Cut to the exterior of a house with supernatural clouds brewing over it, and a shot of ostriches storming through the streets of the real world.
Later, we reunite with the group of Jumanji teens led by Alex Woff’s Spencer, whose grandfather played by Danny DeVito comes and greets the gang in a restaurant. Grandpa points them to a corner booth where Dwayne Johnson’s game avatar Dr. Bravestone sits — speaking, for some reason, in a Spanish accent.
We see that the Jumanji game has invaded the real world, as the avatars of Hart, Black and Karen Gillan show up, not as themselves, but in “demo mode.”
“I’m beginning to suspect,” Jack Black says, “that we’re not in Jumanji.”
This leads our teen heroes back into the game world with the fate of both Jumanji and their world in their hands.
Jumanji: Open World is the third film in a series from Sony reimagining the property, about teens pulled into the world of a game, for a modern audience. First, there was Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), and then there was Jumanji: The Next Level (2019). Both films starred Johnson, Hart, Black and Gillan as players in the Jumanji video game world, with Wolff, Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner, and Ser’Darius Blain playing the real-world teenage counterpart of the avatars.
Sony’s new Jumanji films come on the heels of the original 1995 film iteration, a classic directed by Joe Johnston and starring Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst and Bonnie Hunt, which told the story of a supernatural board game that unleashes jungle-based dangers into the real world. Welcome to the Jungle grossed over $962M worldwide, while The Next Level followed with more than $801 million globally.
Johnson noted in conversation with his co-stars that the new film features an Easter egg to Williams throughout – “one half of the original dice from the original Jumanji.” He added, “This one’s for you.”
Jake Kasdan returned to direct Jumanji 3 from a script written with Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg. Matt Tolmach, Kasdan, Johnson, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia produced the pic alongside EPs Barry Waldman, Melvin Mar, William Teitler, Ted Field, Mike Weber and Chris Van Allsburg.
Slated for release via Columbia Pictures on Christmas Day, the threequel’s cast includes Johnson, Black, Hart and Gillan, Wolff, Iseman, Turner and Blain, plus Rhys Darby, Nick Jonas and Danny DeVito.
