The jungle is coming home.

In a move that sent the internet into a tailspin yesterday, Dwayne Johnson posted a single behind-the-scenes photo from the Atlanta soundstages of Pinewood Studios: five familiar faces grinning like kids who just found the last golden ticket. Caption: “Day 1. The avatars are back… but this time, the game isn’t playing inside the console. It’s playing in YOUR world. Welcome to the chaos. #JUMANJI4 – Christmas 2026.”

Within minutes, #Jumanji4 was the number-one trending topic worldwide. By nightfall, the clip of Kevin Hart sprinting from a rampaging digital rhino across a suburban cul-de-sac had already racked up 87 million views on TikTok. The message was unmistakable: the fourth Jumanji film – officially titled JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL WAS JUST THE BEGINNING (working title) – has begun principal photography, and for the first time in the franchise’s nearly 30-year history, the jungle is no longer contained inside a board game or a cursed video-game cartridge.

This time, the game has escaped. And it’s bringing every vine, hippo, and exploding ostrich with it.

The Gang’s All Here – And They’ve Never Been More Terrified

Dwayne Johnson returns as the impossibly charismatic archaeologist/adventurer Dr. Smolder Bravestone, the in-game avatar of Spencer Gilpin. Kevin Hart reprises Franklin “Mouse” Finbar, the zoologist with the world’s worst survival instincts. Jack Black is back as cartographer Professor Sheldon Oberon (still the greatest body-swap performance in modern comedy), Karen Gillan once again embodies the deadly Ruby Roundhouse, and Alex Wolff returns as the now college-aged Spencer, the de facto leader of the group who accidentally unleashes hell… again.

But the biggest surprise? The entire core cast is filming together from Day 1 – something that rarely happened on the previous sequels due to scheduling nightmares. Sources on set tell us that director Jake Kasdan (who has helmed both Welcome to the Jungle and The Next Level) insisted on a full-family reunion for the first three weeks of shooting, specifically to capture the authentic chaos when the avatars suddenly materialize in the real world and realize they’re stuck in their game bodies – in present-day America.

“They wanted that pure, unfiltered panic,” an insider says. “Imagine Kevin Hart at 5-foot-4 screaming at a flock of flamingos tearing through a Costco parking lot while Dwayne Johnson – full Bravestone, no shirt, glistening – tries to bench-press a minivan off a trapped soccer mom. That’s the tone.”

The Plot: When the Game Comes to You

While Sony remains tight-lipped on official synopsis, multiple production sources and set leaks paint a vivid picture:

After the events of The Next Level, Spencer believed he had finally destroyed every last copy of JUMANJI. He was wrong.

A new, hyper-evolved version of the game – now a sleek, obsidian-black console with no title, no cartridge slot, and a single glowing die symbol – has begun appearing in homes across the globe. No one knows who’s sending them. No one knows why. But the moment someone rolls the digital dice (literally a holographic die that projects from the console), the game doesn’t suck players in.

It spills out.

Jungles erupt through suburban lawns. Stampeding elephants crash through shopping malls. Deadly black mamba motorbikes chase teenagers down highways. And worst of all, the four legendary avatars – Bravestone, Ruby, Finbar, and Oberon – are ripped from the game and stranded in the real world in their superhuman (or hilariously not-superhuman) bodies.

The twist? The only way to send the chaos back into the game is to finish the new level… which keeps rewriting itself based on real-world viral videos, memes, and social media trends. Yes, that means at one point the avatars have to survive a level literally built out of TikTok dances and rage-comics. Jack Black has reportedly already improvised a ten-minute sequence as Professor Oberon attempting the “Renegade” while being chased by a giant mandrill. Test audiences allegedly laughed so hard they had to stop the screening.

A Love Letter to Robin Williams and the 1995 Classic

Perhaps the most emotional detail to emerge from set is the film’s heartfelt tribute to Robin Williams and the original 1995 Jumanji.

Dwayne Johnson is wearing Alan Parrish’s original dice necklace – the very same one Robin Williams’ character clutched throughout the film – as a quiet nod to the man who started it all. Prop master Kate McCarthy confirmed that the necklace was meticulously recreated using the original molds from the ’95 production, then aged and distressed to match the one seen in the final moments of the first movie when the dice wash up on a French beach.

“Robin is in every frame of this movie,” Johnson told crew members during the first table read, reportedly choking up. “We’re not replacing him. We’re passing the dice.”

Early script pages leaked online reveal a beautiful sequence set in Brantford, New Hampshire (the original town), where the avatars stumble into the now-abandoned Parrish mansion. Inside, they discover the original board game has fused with the new console, creating a hybrid artifact that remembers every player who ever rolled – including Alan and Sarah from 1969/1995. In a moment that has left even hardened crew members in tears, the game briefly manifests a translucent image of Robin Williams as Alan Parrish, smiling and giving Bravestone a silent nod of approval before vanishing.

The New Faces – And One Very Familiar One

While the core five are the heart of the film, new characters are already generating buzz.

Awkwafina joins as Jia, a sardonic Twitch streamer whose viral “Jumanji Challenge” videos accidentally accelerate the game’s spread across the planet.
Danny DeVito and Danny Glover are back as Eddie and Milo (from The Next Level), now fully aware that their grandsons have unleashed Armageddon. DeVito reportedly has a sequence riding a stolen mobility scooter through a vine-choked IKEA that has been described as “peak cinema.”
Nick Jonas and Ser’Darius Blain return briefly as Alex and Fridge, now adults trying (and failing) to help from the sidelines.
And in a move that crashed stan Twitter: Rhys Darby reprises his NPC pilot Jefferson McDonough – but this time he’s somehow glitched into the real world and believes he’s a Delta Airlines captain. Expect him screaming “Welcome to Jumanji Air!” while attempting to land a 747 on a freeway.

Chaos on a Scale Never Seen Before

Kasdan and producers have promised this is the biggest, wildest Jumanji yet – and the production schedule backs it up.

Over 60 practical sets are being built across Atlanta, Hawaii, and Calgary, including a fully functional suburban neighborhood that will be overtaken by jungle in a single continuous eight-minute shot.
The animal unit is three times larger than The Next Level, featuring 18 trained rhinos, a herd of albino elephants, and – because someone asked for it – weaponized ostriches wearing explosive backpacks.
Weta Digital is handling the VFX, with a mandate to make the creatures feel “hyper-real but slightly uncanny,” like they know they don’t belong in our reality.
And yes, the iconic Jumanji drums are back – but this time they’re mixed with modern trap beats that get progressively more distorted as the game corrupts reality.

December 11, 2026: The Ultimate Holiday Event

Sony has locked the release date: December 11, 2026 – positioning Jumanji 4 as the centerpiece of the holiday season, directly opposite Disney’s Avatar: Fire and Ash and Paramount’s SpongeBob 4. Industry analysts predict a global opening north of $175 million, with family audiences desperate for a return to the kind of big, funny, heartwarming spectacle that defined the 2017 and 2019 entries.

Early test marketing reportedly scored in the high 90s, with one focus group member famously writing, “I laughed, I cried, I want to live inside this movie forever.”

From the Set: First-Hand Chaos

Yesterday, journalists were allowed a tightly controlled visit to Soundstage 7, where the production has recreated an entire American high-school gymnasium – currently being swallowed by vines while a squadron of flamingos performs synchronized aerial attacks.

Kevin Hart, dripping with sweat and fake mud, yelled across the set: “Y’all wanted more Jumanji? Well congratulations, you just got the WHOLE jungle in your living room!”

Karen Gillan, practicing kicks in Ruby’s signature red crop top, laughed: “I’ve done Nebula, I’ve done time heists, but nothing prepared me for fighting a CGI hippo in a Target aisle at 3 a.m.”

Jack Black, ever the professor, held an impromptu seminar for PAs on the cultural significance of the original board game while simultaneously attempting to teach a trained capuchin monkey the “Nae Nae.”

And Dwayne Johnson – towering, shirtless, and inexplicably holding a live chicken – looked directly at the press corps and grinned: “Christmas 2026. Bring your family. Bring your enemies. Bring noise-canceling headphones. Because once those drums start… there’s no pause button.”

The Legacy – And Why This One Matters

Twenty-nine years after Robin Williams first heard those drums, Jumanji remains one of the few franchises that somehow keeps getting better. Where other series chase nostalgia with diminishing returns, Kasdan and company have consistently reinvented the formula while honoring what came before.

This fourth chapter isn’t just bigger – it’s braver. By bringing the game into our world, it’s asking a question the previous films only danced around: what happens when the chaos we invite for fun refuses to stay contained? In 2025, with algorithms dictating reality and escapism bleeding into everyday life, Jumanji suddenly feels less like fantasy and more like prophecy.

The dice are rolling. The jungle is growing. And somewhere, Robin Williams is smiling.

Mark your calendars. Hide your remotes. And whatever you do – don’t blink when you see a mysterious black console show up on your doorstep.

Because this Christmas, Jumanji isn’t coming to the jungle.

The jungle is coming to you.

JUMANJI 4 – December 11, 2026 The game has changed. The rules have broken. And the avatars? They’re already in your backyard.