Dwayne Johnson Promises The New Jumanji Will Honour Robin Williams

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took to Instagram this morning to offer an update on the upcoming remake of Jumanji that he’ll be starring in. Among the news was a promise the new film would “forever immortalise” Robin Williams’ character from the first film in “an earnest and cool way”.

Here’s the full post.

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. #TheMagicBegins #JustPressStart #JUMANJI

A photo posted by therock (@therock) on May 9, 2016 at 10:23am PDT

So if this version is going to pay tribute to Williams’ character, it seems like this is not just a reboot of the franchise, but a sequel as well. That makes sense. The 1995 film ended with the Jumanji game in the sand somewhere. It will certainly have been passed along in the 20 years since.

Also, the talk of the expanded, exciting cast seems to confirm the original news that Kevin Hart will join Johnson in the film.

Jumanji, directed by Jake Kasdan, already has a US release date of 28 July 2017.