One thing modern franchises love to do is explain some of the most insignificant aspects of their mythologies in painstaking detail, even when it’s largely unnecessary. The very fact that audiences are several films deep into a particular series makes it perfectly clear that they’re in it for the long haul, so we don’t have to see everything spelled out via lengthy exposition dumps or entire scenes dedicated to origins and backstories.
A prime example is the rebooted Jumanji, which surprised a lot of people after Welcome to the Jungle and The Next Level combined to earn over $1.7 billion at the box office and draw enthusiastic responses from both critics and fans who loved the brand’s reinvention into mega budget action blockbuster territory.
The big twist was that the titular board game had returned as a console cartridge, but nobody asked why, nor did the script bother going to any sort of great lengths to tell us how Jumanji had evolved because viewers were already fully on board for the ride. However, we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us an Alien TV series was in the works at Hulu long before it was confirmed – that Dwayne Johnson reportedly wants to see a prequel made about how the game came into existence in the first place.
It’s an aspect of the worldbuilding that’s remained shrouded in mystery ever since Chris Van Allsburg’s original book was published in 1981, and while it certainly possesses the potential for an exciting Jumanji film if handled correctly, the box office numbers seem to indicate that people would rather continue to have Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan taking center stage as opposed to a diving deep into the past.
