Jumanji: How Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart Took the Franchise to the Next Level

Nov 5, 2019

Cinema history is filled with legendary comedic duos, and two stars well on their way to crafting that kind of legacy are Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. While they couldn’t be more different in terms of both physical stature and personality, their energy together is magic and has helped create huge laughs in multiple films. They have crafted a special dynamic together that is a joy to watch in the modern moviegoing world, and soon we will see them back on the big screen together in JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL, a franchise that they wonderfully first boosted back in 2017.

But before the third JUMANJI movie hits theatres on December 13, let’s take a quick step back in time and reflect on all of the times that Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart have teamed up and made us crack up in the last few years.

Central Intelligence

It was a little over three years ago, back in 2016, that we first got to see what Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart could do together as a duo, and the result was the giggle-fest that is director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE. It’s a strange comedy that sees Johnson as a former dork turned CIA agent and Hart as an easygoing accountant, but most importantly, it lets the two actors show off their endless charisma and also has some cool action to boot.

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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Clearly, there wasn’t any kind of big “warming up” period in the relationship between Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, as it was just about a year and a half later that they teamed up with Jack Black and Karen Gillan to breathe new life into the world of JUMANJI. Directed by Jake Kasdan, WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE has the two actors playing very different roles than we’re used to seeing because of the nature of the story, with Hart playing a high school football player stuck in the 5’4” body of Kevin Hart and Johnson playing a meekish computer geek in the 6’5” body of Dwayne Johnson.

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Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

While we’ve known for a while that we would be getting at least one Dwayne Johnson-Kevin Hart movie in 2019 thanks to the theatrical scheduling of JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL, it wasn’t until audiences purchased tickets to see FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS & SHAW that the number jumped up to two. Hart has what really only amounts to a cameo in the film, playing an air marshal who helps the two titular characters when they find themselves in a bind, but what’s really most exciting about the part is the potential to eventually see that role expanded in HOBBS & SHAW 2.

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Jumanji: The Next Level

Thus far, Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart are three-for-three in the successful collaborations department, and we’re now just a little over a month away from seeing if they can make it four-for-four with JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL. Once again, they are changing things up in a major way, as they will respectively be playing the video game avatars of characters in the movie played by the 74-year-old Danny DeVito and the 73-year-old Danny Glover — and a whole lot of laughs are expected.

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL is available now on AMC Theatres On Demand.

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