It’s not for several months, but this year’s holiday film schedule is already heating up. Earlier today, Sony Pictures announced it’s moving the release date for Jumanji 3 so the threequel won’t need to directly compete with Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three in the eternal battle for people’s wallets and attention. Sony’s threequel, starring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Karen Gillan, is moving two weeks out from its initial release on December 11 to December 25, Christmas Day.
Jumanji 3 makes a strategic move
Sony is moving Jumanji 3 to avoid getting swept up in what people are colloquially calling “Dunesday,” the day marking the dual release of Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three. Remember “Barbenheimer?” Same thing, different movies. Jake Kasdan returns to direct Jumanji 3 from a screenplay he wrote with Jeff Pinker and Scott Rosenberg. According to the sequel’s IMDB page, Jumanji 3 is the final film in the franchise.
In the Jumanji movies, a group of teenagers finds themselves trapped in a video game while navigating riddles, death traps, wild animals, unhinged villains, and much more. In addition to Johnson, Hart, Black, and Gillan, Danny DeVito, Nick Jonas, Marin Hinkle, Bebe Neuwirth, Lamorne Morris, and Rhys Darby will return for the final installment of the franchise. Dan Hildebrand (Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy) and Jack Jewkes (Criminal Minds) also join the cast.
Sony’s Jumanji franchise gets that cash
When Sony unleashed Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle in theaters, the reimagined adventure film earned a staggering $962M+ worldwide, surprising everyone. Welcome to the Jungle is a fantastic and fun adventure film with plenty of surprises, laughs, and imagination. It harkens back to a simpler time, when adventure films moved at a swift pace, featured a star-studded cast, and clever twists to make time fly by. In 2019, Sony released a sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level, which grossed an impressive $801M+ worldwide. The Next Level welcomes Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, Awkwafina, and more to the dangerous game.
Bring on the threequel!
How do you feel about a third Jumanji film coming to theaters later this year? I like Welcome to the Jungle more than The Next Level, but I’m more than willing to roll the dice on a third and final film. The chemistry between Johnson, Hart, Black, and Gillan is what drives these movies for me, and that aspect of the franchise always delivers. I think it’s smart for Jumanji 3 to get out of the way of “Dunesday,” and hope audiences save their strength for another trip into the jungle with one last game of Jumanji.
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