Jungle Cruise 2 Looks Like a No-Go
It appears a sequel to the Dwayne Johnson/Emily Blunt starrer, Jungle Cruise, is dead in the water at this particular point in time.
When Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt made the 2021 film, Jungle Cruise, the results at the box-office were pretty good considering it was released during the latter part of the pandemic days. It was stated that a sequel was being considered shortly thereafter. Now, after four years in limbo, Johnson has suggested that the project has most likely been pushed to the side for a number of different reasons.
Johnson doesn’t think the property of Jungle Cruise will be revisited anytime soon. Based on a popular Disney ride, the movie had fleeting financial success, but it is doubtful that it would be something to bring back to the screen anytime soon. Earning $220 million worldwide on a $200 million budget (not including marketing costs), the picture fared somewhat tepidly in the grand scheme of things despite initially being deemed a hit.
If one needed further proof that a Jungle Cruise sequel would not be a financially prosperous proposition, look at the R-rated pairing of Blunt and Johnson in this year’s Oscar-bait film, The Smashing Machine. That film has earned just $20 million worldwide and although it caters to a different audience than the PG-13-rated Jungle Cruise, its low gross is evidence that the drawing power of Johnson and Blunt has subsided at least a tad.
After COVID-19, new leadership at Disney has erased any former plans that were originally in effect to green-light a sequel to the barely successful Jungle Cruise. Although the 2021 movie got an “A-” CinemaScore and good reviews from critics like Courtney Howard, it fit somewhere between being a movie that appealed to older kids and younger ones with neither demographic being properly catered to. Even though the advertising promised a more family-friendly approach to the material, some scenes were simply too scary for younger kids.
Who knows? Maybe 10 years from now, things will change. Indiana Jones even took some time off from being in movies and then, one day, it was decided that he should come back to the big screen again. However, if Jungle Cruise were to come back, it would most likely be for the streaming platform, Disney Plus, rather than for the silver screen.
The whole idea of a Jungle Cruise 2 appears to be swimming with the fishes right now. Had The Smashing Machine made a lot more money at the box-office, people may have thought we needed more movies with Johnson and Blunt at the center of them, but that recent film’s failure has secured the fact that’s not the case at this particular point in time. Johnson’s other fairly recent movie with franchise potential, Black Adam, also suffered the same fate as Jungle Cruise as a sequel to it was also (most likely, permanently) put on the back burner.
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