The new Jumanji, Welcome to the Jungle, is a surprisingly fun little romp. Recently, some of the people behind it dished on some fun alternate ways it could have ended.
Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, the cast and crew shared some ideas that happened in the brainstorming process. The film has a fairly closed-off and cheerful ending, but that wasn’t always the case.
“We played with a bunch of different endings,” said producer Matt Tolmach. “There’s a trap when you make movies about games. You have to make sure they have stakes. We were very intent on making it clear that you could not also get out of the game. That idea was very important to us throughout.”
Star Karen Gillan commented that, “In previous versions there was more of that where [Spencer] wanted to stay in the game with Martha. We made way more of that.”
In addition to an ending where Spencer stayed in the game, another proposed ending leaned hard into the cyclical nature of Jumanji itself.
“There were a few different ideas,” said Ser’Darius Blain, who plays the character who ends up with Kevin Hart as his in-game avatar. “Originally when Alex [Wolff] and Morgan [Turner] kiss, we start hearing the drums again and then everyone gets the game downloaded on their phones. Then it’s like, ‘Oh, shoot! We’re all going to be sucked in.’ That would have been a cool way to go.”
That bloatware, man. It will get ya. That’s why I root my phones. No Jumanji situations.
As for the possibility of a sequel, star Jack Black just said, “Where there’s a will there’s a way. If the people love it and they want another one they will figure out how to do it.”