Sony has locked Jumanji: Open World, the fourth and franchise-closing entry in its $1.6 billion-grossing video-game-portal series, for a Christmas Eve theatrical release on December 24, 2026. The full title was revealed at CinemaCon. Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan all return. Jake Kasdan, who directed the 2017 and 2019 entries, is back behind the camera. Johnson confirmed at the announcement that the film will close out the rebooted franchise.
The premise, as the studio walked it out at CinemaCon and then confirmed in subsequent trade interviews, finally inverts the franchise. Where the 2017 Welcome to the Jungle and 2019 The Next Level pulled their leads into the game’s world, Open World does the opposite: the chaos spills out. New York City wakes up to a herd of stampeding rhinos. A Las Vegas casino floor goes underwater. The four leads, plus a redrawn version of the Jefferson “Seaplane” McDonough avatar Nick Jonas played in the prior installments, have to jump back into the game to seal the breach.
Johnson, in particular, is shifting registers. His Dr. Smolder Bravestone avatar, central to the franchise’s running gag about awkward heroic posturing, will now be calibrated for what Johnson described in an Instagram preview as “a complete tonal pivot.” Hart, by his own admission to the CinemaCon crowd, gets shorter. Black, by his admission, gets taller. Gillan returns as Ruby Roundhouse and, in a piece of casting Sony is keeping quiet for now, picks up a co-lead arc that the studio has confirmed only as “the longest single-character story” of the trilogy.
The December 24 date locks in the franchise’s Christmas-week launch pattern that has, by Sony’s count, generated roughly $700 million in domestic box office across the prior two installments. Open World will face a rival December 25 launch from Disney’s Wicked: Part 2 and a December 19 release from Warner Bros.’s Frozen 3 — the most crowded Christmas frame for any US studio since 2019.
According to The Direct’s coverage of the announcement, Sony Pictures Group chair Tom Rothman framed Open World as the franchise’s farewell internally, telling Sony’s exhibitor partners the film “closes the loop on the modern Jumanji story.” Johnson’s onstage line from CinemaCon, repeated to the trades over the weekend, was less corporate. “We had a great run. This is the goodbye one.”
Production wrapped in February in Atlanta and on location in New Zealand. The film is shooting in IMAX 1.43:1 native, which puts it in the same theatrical-spec class as Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, due the same Christmas. The week’s other family-film story — Joan Cusack returning to the Toy Story 5 premiere for the first red carpet of her in 11 years — sat under the same December-release umbrella Pixar and Sony have both been quietly stacking around the four-day Christmas weekend.
Kasdan, who has spent the better part of three years between Hart’s Lift and the second season of Jury Duty, returned to the Jumanji property in part because Johnson’s negotiated participation depended on it. “He brought us all back the first time,” Hart told MovieWeb’s CinemaCon panel coverage. “It was always going to be him for the last one.” Kasdan has confirmed, but Sony has not yet released, the project’s full original score, written by returning composer Henry Jackman.
The first trailer is expected in mid-September, alongside a Sony-exclusive IMAX preview the studio confirmed will be appended to the Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse Part Two release. The tie-in board game from Hasbro, retailing at $59.99, ships November 14 in time for the holiday shopping window. The franchise-closing film, in other words, is also a franchise-extending one. Jumanji: Open World lands in theaters Christmas Eve.
