‘Jumanji 3’ adds Dania Ramirez, still set for December release
Once Upon a Time and X-Men: The Last Stand actress Dania Ramirez is joining the sequel to Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, called Jumanji 3 until an official name is assigned.
Jumanji 3 is being directed and co-written by Jake Kasdan, who brings back the central cast members Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas and while adding new ones Awkwafina, Danny DeVito and Danny Glover.
News confirmed recently that the “young cast” from Welcome to the Jungle will also be back in some way: Alex Wolff, Ser’darius Blain, Madison Iseman, and Morgan Turner have all signed on to return to the sequel, according to Deadline.
It’s no surprise that plot details are being kept under wraps.
Ramirez starred on Once Upon a Time as Jacinda/Cinderella, did a lot of voice actor work, spent three years on a TV show Devious Maids, Alex on Entourage and Callisto on the failed X-Men: The Last Stand.
Jumanji 3 is currently set for December 13, 2019.
Fans really enjoyed that Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was not a remake but a sequel to the 1995 Robin Williams movie. The board game his character disposed of re-emerges in a 1996 prologue, and Nick Jonas’s character reveals he’s been living in Alan Parrish’s jungle fort.
“Our hope is to keep a long continuity through the whole thing, even though the story that we’re telling in the second movie, the movie that we’re working on right now is much more connected to the first movie that I made a year ago than it is to the original,” Kasdan said.
“We love the idea of keeping all of this together and connected in some way or another.”
Kasdan was asked about the timeline, keeping it all straight.
“The original has this very sort of complex narrative shape in terms of timeline,” Kasdan said. “When we were making my first movie, that took a bit of wrapping and unwrapping to figure out, but I’ve always loved that idea which is that by winning, you return to where you went in. So we kept that idea from the original movie and used it in a different way in our movie.”
Kasdan is still aiming for a Christmas 2019 release, though he’ll have to finish the script and assess it then.
“We’re going for it,” Kasdan said. “We’ll have a better idea in a few months.”
