Jumanji:
The American movie Jumanji with urban fantasy and adventure genre was first released in 1995. Jumanji became number one among the fantasy movies and it crossed The Toy Story. It became a high-rated movie earning 262.8 million dollars across the world. The movie stood 39 out of 100 on Metacritic. It starred Robin Williams, Jonathan Hyde, Bebe Neuwirth, Bonnie Hunt, Kirsten Dunst, and David Alan Grier. Sony Picture Releasing released the movie and yet it became the tenth highest-grossing film. The Jumanji Franchise considering its reputation and importance later released three sequels. Jumanji being so popular and adventurous, released several games with the same name as well.
There is also a themed dark ride at Garland with the name of the film, featuring various mechatronic puppets. It was opened in 2022.
Sequels:
The franchise released three sequels “Zathura: A Space Adventure”, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle”, and “Jumanji: The Next Level”. Let’s talk about the sequels and their popularity.
Zathura: A Space Adventure:
This was released by the year 2005, a famous movie and the first sequel by the Jumanji franchise. The story was based on a storybook published in 2002 with the same name Zathura. Originally, the film was not the Jumanji version. It just had a tagline of “A new adventure from the world of “Jumanji”. It was a story of two brothers Walter and Danny Browning, who found a mysterious board game in their house. The game took them and their sister to outer space where they met an astronaut, who assisted them in finishing the game and returning home.
The film was not worthy of its investment and was consider a flop movie. This affected the Jumanji franchise as well due to the clear-to-cut tagline.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle:
Later in 2017, the director Jake Kasdan directed a sequel to Jumanji starring mainly Dwayne Johnson. It was a direct sequel to Jumanji and the story was about four teenagers who got stuck in a magical video game, they had to work together and finish the game to escape. The movie was based on four genres Action, Adventure, Comedy, and Fantasy at a time.
The film earned 995.3 million dollars worldwide and became the fifth-highest film of 2017. This movie maintained the reputation of the Jumanji franchise.
Jumanji: The Next Level:
Here comes the movie that is also known as Jumanji 3. Although the third sequel but in general the second direct sequel. It was shoot by the same director as “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle”. It was released in 2019. Jumanji: The Next Level grossed the highest amount among all the sequels. It earned 1 billion dollars and became the top-rated movie. This movie also starred Dwayne Johnson and followed the story of the previous sequel.
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The film result as it was expected by the director. The director once said about it; “Our hope is to keep a long continuity through the whole thing, even though the story that we’re telling in the second movie, the movie that we’re working on right now is much more connected to the first movie that I made a year ago than it is to the original. We love the idea of keeping all of this together and connected in some way or another”.
His idea was to connect this movie with previous ones, especially the 2017 release. And he fulfilled the promise successfully.
Till now it is difficult to talk about Jumanji 4 but it is still a question whether the director Jake Kasdan and the leading actor Dwayne Johnson will make Jumanji 4, the next sequel or not.
