This article contains SPOILERS for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle almost ended differently according to the movie’s cast. As a standalone sequel to Joe Johnston’s 1995 action-comedy Jumanji, which itself is based on Chris Van Allsburg’s novel of the same name, Jake Kasdan’s Jumanji 2 brought the series into the modern day by transforming the classic board game into a ’90s-era video game. In the film, Four high school students in detention found the video game and were subsequently sucked into its world, where they had to complete the story in order to return home.
Upon entering the game, the students took control of the avatars they selected – played by Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black, as well as Nick Jonas – and were given three lives to complete the game and save Jumanji. While most of the characters weren’t happy with their chosen avatars, Alex Wolff’s Spencer Gilpin (whose avatar was Johnson’s Dr. Smolder Bravestone) liked being his avatar and wanted to stay in the game after saving the jungle, instead of returning home along with the others. While Spencer returns to the real world in Jumanji 2‘s final cut and finds himself with a group of new friends (and a girlfriend), the story almost took a different turn and ended with Spencer still in the game.
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In an interview with THR, Gillan says Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle almost ended with Spencer and Morgan Turner’s Martha Kaply, who Gillan plays the avatar Ruby Roundhouse, staying in the world of Jumanji, which could’ve been an ideal way to set up a sequel. She said: “In previous versions, there was more of that where [Spencer] wanted to stay in the game with Martha. We made way more of that. It definitely could be interesting and would definitely leave it open to a sequel.“
![Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Actor Reveals Alternate Ending](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Jumanji-Welcome-to-the-Jungle-Cast.jpg)
As previously mentioned, Jumanji 2 ultimately ends with all four characters back in the real world. But audiences may recall a moment in which the students hear Jumanji’s drums once more. To prevent anyone from being drawn into Jumanji ever again, they destroyed the video game (and the console). However, Ser’Darius Blain says that’s not how the movie was supposed to end, either.
“There were a few different ideas. 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.”
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is performing surprisingly well at the box office and the cast already has hopes for Jumanji 3, should another sequel happen, so it’s possible that the ’90s video game will take the next step and become a mobile game, thus bringing the series well into the 21st century, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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