Jake Kasdan delivers a moving speech as his Jumanji sequel wraps production

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, sequel, Dwayne Johnson

After rolling the dice on a star-studded sequel to Joe Johnston's 1995 comedy adventure JUMANJI starring the late and great Robin Williams, Sony and director Jake Kasdan won big at the box office with a $962 billion global take for JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE. The 2017 action showcase starring Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Karen Gillan featured a new spin on the supernatural board game, wherein four teenagers were sucked into a magical video game, and the only way they can escape is to work together to finish the game.

Upon arriving to rave reviews during 2017's holiday season, it quickly became very obvious that Sony and Kasdan had launched a reboot with major franchise potential. Thus, in February of 2018, it was announced that Kasdan would direct a sequel, with Scott Rodenberg and Jeff Pinkner once again penning the script. Shortly thereafter, it was confirmed that Johnson, Black, Hart, and Gillan would return to the franchise to reprise their roles, alongside the original's teenage cast in Alex Wolff, Ser'Darius Blain, Madison Iseman, and Morgan Turner.

With their powers combined, Kasdan and his team set to work on filming the follow-up to JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE, a process that finds the players returning to again play a most dangerous game filled with deception and dastardly villains hiding around every tree trunk. Now, after several months of filming, it's been announced via Instagram that filming on the sequel has officially wrapped!

The news came to us late Monday morning courtesy of an Instagram video posted by Dwayne Johnson himself. In the video, you can see and hear Jake Kasdan making a flowery speech about the tireless efforts of his cast and crew, in addition to celebrating the power and influence of the Jumanji franchise.

You can watch the production wrap video for yourself below:

In addition to Kasdan's heartfelt speech, Johnson posted his own "thank you" in the comments section for the video, saying: "What a 2 year journey to get to this point of completion. Thank you to our brilliant & hard working crew & filmmakers. And as always, to the ones who all this is done for – our audience – hope you enjoy. Cheers and I’ll see ya down the road."

While the sequel still has yet to receive an official title, and plot details remain scarce, we know that fans of the action-adventure comedy will be invited to play another game of Jumanji later this year, when the film invades theaters on December 13th.

Source: Instagram

About the Author

Born and raised in New York, then immigrated to Canada, Steve Seigh has been a JoBlo.com editor, columnist, and critic since 2012. He started with Ink & Pixel, a column celebrating the magic and evolution of animation, before launching the companion YouTube series Animation Movies Revisited. He's also the host of the Talking Comics Podcast, a personality-driven audio show focusing on comic books, film, music, and more. You'll rarely catch him without headphones on his head and pancakes on his breath.