The Rock Found His Fast & Furious Replacement 6 Years Ago – So Why Is Another Sequel Taking So Long?

While Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson seems to have already worked out a perfect replacement for the Fast & Furious franchise, the progress of this series has still been frustratingly slow. The Rock’s movie career has been incredibly impressive, but his star power isn’t always enough to fuel an entire franchise. From Jungle Cruise to Black Adam to Southland Tales, The Rock has appeared in plenty of movies that were not financially successful enough to warrant an immediate string of sequels and spinoffs. His role in the Fast & Furious franchise ensures that The Rock remains a huge box office draw, but not a consistent one.

Although not all of Dwayne Johnson’s movies are hits, the star does have plenty of successes to his name. Baywatch succeeded at the box office in 2017, while Rampage proved a hit a year later. Moreover, the Fast & Furious franchise isn’t the only popular series in which the star plays a major role. 2017’s Jumanji; Welcome to the Jungle was a massive hit for Johnson and its 2019 sequel Jumanji: The Next Level managed to repeat the comedy adventure’s success. Jumanji; Welcome to the Jungle earned a staggering $995 million at the box office while its sequel made $800 million.

Jumanji Is The Rock’s Most Successful Fast & Furious Replacement

The Jumanji movies play to The Rock’s screen strengths better than other franchises

The Jumanji movies are the most financially and critically successful of The Rock’s movie franchises outside of the Fast & Furious saga. The adventure series seems like a natural choice to replace that franchise when it finally ends. Not only did both Jumanji movies make an incredible amount at the box office, but they also earned great reviews. Admittedly, Jumanji; Welcome to the Jungle was a bigger success than its followup, but both movies were well-regarded by reviewers, and Jumanji: The Next Level changed enough of the original movie’s formula to feel fresh, funny, and interesting.

Particularly after Jungle Cruise failed with critics and audiences alike, the Jumanji movies look more and more like The Rock’s best hope after the Fast & Furious franchise. They are even more family-friendly than the Fast & Furious series and feature other bankable stars like Jack Black. While Skyscraper and Rampage succeeded as standalone hits, Jumanji has engaging characters around which a successful, longstanding series can be built. Like Fast & Furious, the franchise is more about the interplay between its heroes than its action set-pieces. Despite this, Jumanji still doesn’t have a third installment five years after Jumanji: The Next Level was released.

Why Jumanji 4 Hasn’t Happened Yet

Jumanji 4’s unexplained production delays could jeopardize its box office

According to an interview with series star Karen Gillan, there is no known reason for the lengthy wait between Jumanji movies. Gillan told The Hollywood Reporter that, while it was hard to align the schedules of everyone involved, she had not yet heard any specific plans for the sequel beyond the fact that it would someday enter production. Jumanji 4 taking so long could hurt the movie’s box office prospects, since viewers won’t wait forever for a follow-up to the 2019 sequel. However, the fact that Gillan didn’t mention any specific impediments to the movie’s production could be good for the franchise.

While The Rock is busy with DC projects and the Fast & Furious movies, Jack Black has the Super Mario Bros franchise, Borderlands, the Minecraft movie, and the Kung Fu Panda series keeping him busy. Few of these franchises have proven as astronomically successful as the Jumanji movies, but both The Rock’s Fast & Furious movies and Black’s Kung Fu Panda series are more reliable than the delayed Jumanji series. The fact that it has been five years since the release of Jumanji: The Next Level places more pressure on the franchise’s next installment, something that the Fast & Furious sequels avoided by arriving at regular intervals.

The Rock’s Fast & Furious Return Might Make Jumanji 4 More Difficult

The star’s busy slate won’t make shooting the sequel easy

The fact that The Rock will return in Fast & Furious 11 could ironically see the actor’s biggest franchise hurt his second-biggest series. The closing credits of Fast X revealed that Hobbs would be back in Fast & Furious 11, which will be the franchise’s final outing. This doesn’t bode well for Jumanji’s chances of receiving a sequel any time soon. Although The Rock is always likely to be busy, his screen presence in the final installment of a beloved multi-billion dollar franchise is about as big an impediment to a potential Jumanji sequel as one could imagine.

Even if The Rock could somehow film both Fast & Furious 11 and Jumanji 4 at the same time, there is another problem with his role in the final outing of the series. Fast & Furious 11 hopes to salvage the box office underperformance of the last two movies in the series, which means the last thing that the sequel needs is another Dwayne Johnson movie coming out and stealing its thunder. Even if The Rock makes new entries into both franchises almost simultaneously, Jumanji 4 couldn’t be released until after Fast & Furious 11. Since Fast & Furious 11 won’t arrive until 2025, that’s quite a wait.

Jumanji Is The Movie Franchise The Rock Has Been Searching For

Jumanji’s action/adventure/comedy hybrid is ideally suited to The Rock

The reason Jumanji 4’s delays are so frustrating is that the series represents a perfect distillation of The Rock’s screen appeal. Early in his movie career, The Rock struggled to translate his wrestling superstardom into mainstream popularity as a leading man. Movies like Walking Tall saw him take himself far too seriously, while the likes of Tooth Fairy saw the star overcorrect by leaning into an overly family-friendly, corny persona. The Rock found the right balance in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle‘s funniest scenes, with a blend of sweet character comedy and risqué jokes perfectly suited to him.

Now, Fast & Furious 11 may end up standing in the way of the star’s ideal role. Since Jumanji 2: The Next Level saw the player characters switch their avatars in the game, this allowed The Rock to effectively play a totally different character in the sequel. Whether he was an awkward teenage boy in the original movie or a grouchy old man in its sequel, the star was right at home in both movies. The Jumanji franchise provided a perfect outlet for the wrestling legend’s blend of charisma, self-aware comedy, and machismo, so Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson must prioritize the series as a result.