Jumanji

Get ready for a video game Jumanji with your first look at the new blockbuster sequel starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart.

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.

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.

Last year, we published a video essay on Arnold Schwarzenegger that suggested that Arnold is much an auteur as the directors he has worked with. While most people still think of movies like Terminator and True Lies as the work of James Cameron, our own Matt Singer argued  —  and rather persuasively, I might add  —  that Arnold’s status as a cinematic auteur should be just as important a factor in how we evaluate his films. No matter who is behind the camera of an Arnold movie, you know the types of characters and narratives you are going to get.

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).

What do actors do between takes? Acting is hard work, but there’s also a whole lot of time when actors just have to sit there doing nothing while camera lenses are fixed or shots are set up or their co-stars are getting into position. After their hilarious dueling set videos during production of this summer’s Central Intelligence, it looks like Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson are back at it again during their downtime in the jungles of Hawaii while filming the Jumanji sequel.

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...

2017’s summer movie slate includes Jumanji, which at first was announced as a remake and later revealed as a sequel, which means it should have been called 2manji, but whatever, no one listens to my amazing ideas. The cast for the legacyquel to the popular ’90s hit starring the late Robin Williams will feature Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Nick Jonas, and the latest addition to the gang, Guardian of the Galaxy’s Karen Gillan.

Up until now, the cast of Dwayne Johnson’s new Jumanji movie (which he says is a sequel, not a reboot) has been dominated entirely by men, so today’s casting update is a fairly refreshing one. If you were concerned that Jumanji might just star a bunch of dudes (charming dudes, but still), you can stop worrying because Karen Gillan is officially the first woman to join the cast.

This weekend, as he normally does, Dwayne Johnson went on Instagram to say goodbye to his most recent movie shoot and say hello to the next thing in his pipeline (seriously, the only time this guy sleeps must be when he is flying from one movie location to another). And while it’s worth noting that Johnson thanked many of the Fast 8 cast and crew excluding Vin Diesel  —  the feud lives on!  —  it was another small comment about his upcoming production of Jumanji that turned a few heads.