The game is officially out of control in the final trailer for Jumanji: Open World. Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Karen Gillan are back for one last adventure, but this time the danger isn’t waiting for them inside a video game. Jumanji has broken free of its console, bringing its characters and unpredictable chaos into the real world. The film arrives exclusively in theaters on Christmas Day, December 25.
Sony is billing Jumanji: Open World as the final installment of the modern action-adventure trilogy that began with Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle in 2017 and continued with Jumanji: The Next Level in 2019. Director Jake Kasdan returns, working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg. The new trailer gives the returning cast another round of body-swapping comedy, only with the rules of the game turned upside down.
The biggest twist involves Spencer’s mother, Janice, played by Marin Hinkle. In the previous films, Spencer Gilpin and his friends were pulled into the game and took on the bodies of their chosen avatars. Now the game characters are loose in the real world, and Janice gets caught up in the madness. She ends up inhabiting Dr. Smolder Bravestone, the muscular adventurer played by Johnson, while Spencer, played by Alex Wolff, finds himself in the body of Ruby Roundhouse, Karen Gillan’s martial arts expert.
That switch gives Johnson and Gillan a fresh spin on characters audiences already know. Bravestone’s imposing physique has always been part of the joke, especially when a nervous teenager is the person controlling him. Putting Spencer’s mother in that body opens up another comic possibility, while Spencer has to deal with life as a character whose fighting skills are a lot more impressive than his own.
The trailer also brings back Kevin Hart as Franklin “Mouse” Finbar and Jack Black as Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon. The returning avatars have to navigate a world where video game rules no longer stay safely inside the console. Animal stampedes and game hazards threaten ordinary people, and the characters must find a way to restore the boundary between Jumanji and reality before the glitch spreads any further.
Along with the four central stars, the returning cast includes Nick Jonas, Danny DeVito, Awkwafina, Rhys Darby, Alex Wolff, Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner, Ser’Darius Blain, Bebe Neuwirth, and Hinkle. Lamorne Morris also returns after appearing as the repairman whose visit to Spencer’s home helped set the events in motion. New additions include Burn Gorman, Brittany O’Grady, and Nasim Pedrad.
The franchise began with the 1995 film starring Robin Williams, based on Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 children’s book about a mysterious board game that unleashes jungle dangers into the real world. The 2017 revival transformed the concept into a video game adventure, with teenagers trapped inside the game and represented by avatars played by Johnson, Hart, Black, and Gillan. Welcome to the Jungle became a major box-office success, leading to The Next Level two years later.
Now the series is bringing the danger back to the real world, with one final game on the line. Jumanji: Open World opens in theaters on December 25.
