Dwayne Johnson Says His JUMANJI Reboot Will Honor Robin Williams
A couple weeks ago it was announced that Dwayne Johnson had joined the upcoming Jumanji reboot currently in development. A lot of fans of the original film — like myself — expressed concern over the remake because of Robin Williams and the incredible performance he gave. In a recent post on Instagram, Johnson addresses these concerns and also offers up some details on the film. The actor and producer says:
“And the #JUMANJI magic begins.
Excellent meeting with our director Jake Kasdan, producer Matt Tolmach, and our @SevenBucksProd team to work on our new re-imagining of this amazing story.
I felt like in order to craft something cool we should begin where it all started. Award winning writer Chris Van Allsburg’s source material of JUMANJI. Chris also wrote THE POLAR EXPRESS (later adapted by Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks) and has a very special & magical way of storytelling.
I’m feelin’ good and confident stepping into these shoes as a producer as well as actor to bring you something great that you and your entire fam can enjoy.
An important thing that I want to be honest and bring up is Robin Williams. The love and respect I have for this man is boundless. You have my word, we will honor his name and the character of “Alan Parrish” will stand alone and be forever immortalized in the world of JUMANJI in an earnest and cool way. I have an idea of what to do and I think his family will be proud. I also think Robin is somewhere lookin’ down and laughing, remembering the first time we met backstage and I (for the first time ever) was a star struck bumbling idiot that couldn’t even get my words out. Idiot. He literally calmed me down w/ that smile and laugh. But that’s for another fun story down the road.
We got a great team assembled already over at our home base of SONY and now we build from here.
Here’s another fun part… in the original movie there were three big roles. In our new story there’s now FIVE. Been so damn cool to see all my actor buddies push their projects aside so hopefully they can come play in our world. Should have cool casting announcements this week. Will keep you posted.”
It sounds to me like in some way they are going to connect this new movie to the original 1995 film, and I’m curious to see how they do that exactly, especially with Williams’ character. It is good to know that they want to honor him with this movie. Jumanji is set to be directed by Jake Kasdan (Zero Effect, Orange County, Bad Teacher), and there’s a chance that Kevin Hart might be involved with the film as well. The film is set to be released on July 28th, 2017.