Jack Black

Netflix has risen to the top of the pile when it comes to festival season acquisitions, the streaming giant cleaning up at this year’s Sundance, and poised to do the same at TIFF after causing Cannes to go into a tizzy. One of the funniest and most rave-reviewed films out of Sundance this year was Jack Black’s The Polka King, which starred Black as real-life Pennsylvania polka legend Jan Lewan, and Netflix has just snatched it up.

2015 seems like forever ago — we were all so clean then, so innocent and unaware — but it hasn’t been all that long since Jack Black starred in the big-screen adaptation of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps chapter books. Though the movie itself was pretty middling, Black had gobs of fun as Stine himself, playing the noted kiddie-horror writer as a Vincent Price-esque Gothic weirdo. And it would now seem that Black had a good time with his foray into horror from his comedy home, as some wise casting director has obliged him with a high-profile new gig that should send him deeper into the genre.

With so many massive studio tentpoles springing up all over, you’d be forgiven for letting the gestating Jumanji remake slip your mind. The rework of the ’90s kid-friendly fantasy film, playing under the somewhat unwieldy title Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (yeah, tack the tagline right onto the title, why not!) will come to theaters December 20, but prying eyes have already ensnared some key details about the film. There was the whole brouhaha surrounding Karen Gillan’s hilariously impractical jungle outfit and her mealy-mouthed explanation as to why her character had to get all hotted up for a nature expedition, a controversy I have dubbed Midriffgate, and now today brings news of another curious detail of story.

In the tradition of ScreenCrush series like You Think You Know Movies and You Think You Know TV comes a new YouTube series: Top Five! Every month (or so; we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on), ScreenCrush editor and critic Matt Singer will count down a particular topic from the world of movies (and probably write these introductory posts in the third person).

The only people who still regularly play board games are adults: 30-somethings who drink craft beer, elderly people who get bored and raid the nursing home activity closet, my mom’s overly-competitive boyfriend. Some kids play them, sure — but it’s usually begrudgingly during forced “family night,” or if they come from one of those homes without TVs and where the only magazines are Highlights. There’s a reason why you can play Monopoly and Scrabble on your iPhone now, which is why it’s not surprising that the new Jumanji movie doesn’t center around a tangible board game, but a video game.

“Sometimes,” says self-made musical impresario Jan Lewan (Jack Black) in The Polka King, “to make money you have to spend money.” The problem with Jan is he didn’t spend money sometimes, he did it every time. Every get-rich quick scheme he ever hatched up in his Pennsylvania gift shop required more investment than potential profit. He sold his polka fans on a “premium Pope package,” a lavish vacation to Rome that included a private audience with the Pope. But Jan had no way to deliver on his promise, so he just showed up at the Vatican with a briefcase full of cash. He got his audience, and delighted his tour group. But his “premium” vacation surely cost him more than he made.

It’s hard not to get a little bit excited for the new Jumanji movie — with a cast that includes Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan, they could be making a live-action movie about Thomas the Tank Engine and we’d still watch it. So while we wait for the first official trailer, Johnson and Co. have been keeping us up to date with a steady stream of behind-the-scenes photos and videos, the latest of which offers some insight into the difficulties of filming a big budget movie in Hawaii (spoiler: it’s not that difficult).

Board games are sort of perfect for the current Hollywood franchise model. Board games are both recognizably familiar and new every single time you play. They end, but they can always be restarted by clearing the board and resetting the points to zero...

It might be getting a little more difficult for Jumanji loyalists to remain skeptical of the reboot. As if the casting of Dwayne Johnson weren’t enough for you, today brings word that Jack Black is in talks to join the cast, while it appears that Johnson’s Central Intelligence co-star Kevin Hart has officially signed on. If you aren’t even remotely enticed by the prospect of watching those three get into shenanigans with an assortment of various jungle animals, then I don’t know what could possibly make you feel joy.

Although Goosebumps didn’t do crazy-amazing business at the box office, the 2015 film based on R.L. Stine’s prolific youth horror franchise did well enough — more importantly, the surprisingly delightful adaptation appealed to fans of all ages with a style and tone reminiscent of ’80s family horror flicks. If you were a fan of Goosebumps, then you’re surely a fan of today’s news, as Sony is moving ahead on a sequel with original director Rob Letterman and screenwriter Darren Lemke in talks to return.