Jumanji: The Next Level follows the massive success of 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, which revived the long-gone franchise. Director Jake Kasdan may have begun working on the sequel immediately, but he wasn’t always expecting there to be one at all. He spoke about his surprise with Screen Rant, and also shared the journey to casting big names like Danny DeVito, Danny Glover and Awkwafina for the Jumanji: The Next Level.
Congratulations on film; amazing job. I had so much fun. It's crazy, because you watch the original Robin Williams one and you think, "How are you going to live up to that?" And the first one nails it, and the second one you're like, "Alright, that was almost perfect. How do you do it again?" And you did it.
Jake Kasdan: Thank you. That's great to hear.
Danny DeVito and Danny Glover write a lot of their own jokes. Were they cast first as the sequel grew around their personalities, or were they brought in after the script is finalized?
Jake Kasdan: Well, we knew that we wanted to try and get them when we had this big idea that this was how this one was going to work. They were the first two guys we talked about, it's obvious this is what we're going to do. To the point where I sat with DJ and I sat with Kevin and said, "I'm thinking it's DeVito and I'm thinking it's Glover." And both guys were like, "Yes! Yes, let's do that." And then I went and started tracking them down and trying to get them into it as we were writing the script.
So, I was writing it for them. I didn't actually have them yet, but I was trying to get them both with what I was doing on the page, with the guys I was writing with, and by actually pursuing them.
One thing that I loved about this film is Karen Gillan was really leading the charge in Jumanji this time around. Can you talk to me about why you wanted to focus in on that a little bit more? Because I think her character is brilliant. She's great.
Jake Kasdan: Good, man. It's great to hear you say that. It's a very on-point observation about it. That's exactly how we always talk about it since we started to figure out this story and how it's going to work as they're going to find Spencer. I realized that - as I kind of got the characters and figured out what everybody was doing, who's playing what, who's doing which avatar and all that - what ended up happening sort of came from two things.
One was Karen is just an amazing actress, and she's sort of this brilliant - you want to say straight man, except that she's crazy funny doing that stuff. She's a perfect comedy partner for all of them, which is a rare gift, as well as being like a legit action hero. There's a lot of stuff that she does in the movie, that she is the only one who does it. Subtle stuff. She's also usually the one who's kind of driving home the stakes, and when it's dangerous, you know it's dangerous because you cut to her face. She just has all those moves.
As I kind of realized that Karen was lining up with who was playing what, it actually put us in kind of a cool thing where Martha is kind of in charge Yes. And she gets to be both the leader of the pack and kind of the quarterback for a significant part of the movie; a really significant part of the movie. To me there's something kind of quietly romantic about that, which is that going to find her dude and she's such an ass kicker. So, she actually has as much action, or arguably more action, than anyone else in the movie. She just does that stuff so well.
Were there any happy accidents on set where, you may have seen some of the actors embodying somebody else and you're like, "Okay, we're gonna we're going to go with this." Because Awkwafina's Danny DeVito is amazing. It's always The Rock's, but I was so shocked at how well that worked.
Jake Kasdan: She is amazing. Nora's amazing - I mean, Awkwafina. She's brilliant, and I was a huge fan before. Another one I went and sought out before we had even had a script, which was a really funny, great meeting that I'll remember forever. She came to my office, and we sat down, and I was like, "Okay, here's what happens in the next movie." She knew the first movie and she dug it, and I was like, "Here's what happens the next movie."
It's a complicated story to pitch out in that form, but I like gave her the half hour and told her the whole story. "So, this is what you're going to be doing, and then you're doing this," and she was like, "I'm in. Let's go!"
Super random question, but there was a debate on our bus heading back to the hotel last night about whether or not Switchblade was Luke Evans. Is it not?
Jake Kasdan: That's so funny. I just got wind of that. No, it's not Luke Evans.
What about this story inspired you to come back for another trip around Jumanji? I know you've been on this for four years, so it almost never ended for you. But what helped inform the story that you wanted to tell at this moment?
Jake Kasdan: It's funny, because they were directly continuous, like you said. There was kind of no pause. But even as much as that's true, I did not think after the first one came out that we were going to make another one. I wasn't really thinking about that; I just wasn't focused on it that way, and actually was really sort of suspicious of whether it was a good idea. Because I loved the first movie, and I sort of felt like we told the story. But then there was this other part of me that was just like, "I love these people. I love working with them." I'm sure you can feel that the vibe is something special that'll kind of never happen again. It's a wonderful thing. The idea was huge, and it was a new kind of filmmaking. It's huge and it can incorporate all different kinds of things.
