Even though Disney and Dwayne Johnson are re-teaming for the live-action Moana, they will not be working together on Jungle Cruise 2. It has been four years since Disney announced plans for a sequel to 2021’s Jungle Cruise, the action-adventure film starring Johnson and Emily Blunt, based on the iconic theme park ride. While the film entered development in 2022, the sequel has since been stuck in development hell.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, stars Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt were asked if The Jungle Cruise was still in development. Both stars replied, “I don’t think so.” Blunt added that Disney “did not want to set sail again, and that’s fine.” Johnson elaborated more on the situation, explaining how much has changed behind the scenes, not just for Disney but the entire entertainment industry, since the original movie was shot in 2019 and even the sequel was announced in 2021. Johnson said:
“I think when Disney came under new leadership, they just shifted coming out of COVID. COVID shifted our business in a lot of ways. I think they looked at that property and thought, we did it once, not sure if we should revisit it again. Despite whether or not our chemistry was great.”
Disney Is Rethinking Its Approach to Sequels
A Jungle Cruise movie had been in development at Disney since 2004, following the breakout success of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. The movie went through various stages of development until Johnson signed on to star in 2015, with cameras finally rolling in 2018. Jungle Cruise was originally set to open on October 11, 2019, before being moved to July 24, 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the film by over a year, finally arriving in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access on July 31, 2021.
The Jungle Cruise grossed $117 million domestically and $221 million worldwide, and reportedly brought in $66 million in its first thirty days on Disney+ with Premier Access. Despite opening in the early months of theaters’ reopening following the COVID-19 pandemic and as audiences slowly returned, The Jungle Cruise was deemed a financial disappointment, with a combined production and marketing budget of $362 million and needing to make $500 million to break even. That certainly made Disney’s initial decision to greenlight the sequel questionable.
It is clear that the Walt Disney Company has been rethinking much of its film strategy, and not just moving forward with sequels to any properties. The combined disappointments of Lightyear, Haunted Mansion, and now Tron: Ares have likely made Disney more hesitant about which projects they invest resources into for a sequel, particularly with a movie like Jungle Cruise, which was not exactly a breakout critical or audience hit. Unlike Disney’s decision to cancel Adam Driver and Steven Soderbergh’s Star Wars movie The Hunt for Ben Solo, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking out a billboard to call for Disney to greenlight Jungle Cruise 2.
- Release Date
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July 28, 2021
- Runtime
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127 minutes
- Director
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Jaume Collet-Serra
- Writers
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Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
- Producers
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Beau Flynn, Douglas C. Merrifield, Dwayne Johnson, John Davis, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia, John Fox