Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds are two of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors, a pair of the industry’s most popular stars and very good friends, so it’s fitting that they’ve both managed to headline a family-friendly blockbuster hailing from Disney that’s found box office success by the standards of the pandemic era.
In fact, if you count Johnson’s cameo in Reynolds’ Free Guy alongside his leading role in Jungle Cruise, then he’s appeared in both of them. The former topped the domestic box office for two weekends and looks set to accomplish the same feat in China over this frame, while the latter is rapidly closing in on a global haul of $200 million, on top of Premier Access sales that are reportedly hovering around the $50 million mark.
It was just a few days after Jungle Cruise was released that The Rock took to social media and teased he was holding sequel talks with the Mouse House imminently, and he’s at it again. As well as sharing another behind the scenes video of him repeatedly cracking up alongside co-star Emily Blunt, the 49 year-old said big news is coming next week.
The most obvious outcome is that a second installment in the Jungle Cruise franchise will be announced, but it could also be something else entirely, possibly Johnson’s Frank Wolff and Blunt’s Lily Houghton finding themselves added to the titular attraction at one of the Disneyland locations around the world. Then again, it would cost the Imagineers an absolute fortune to craft a life-size model of the hulking action star, and it’s been clear from the outset that the studio viewed the adventure series as having the potential to replicate the success of Pirates of the Caribbean.
