Disney Shelves “Jungle Cruise 2,” Johnson and Blunt Say Sequel Is Off

Disney has quietly dropped plans for “Jungle Cruise 2,” with stars Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt saying the long-discussed sequel is no longer moving ahead. Speaking on an awards-season podcast interview highlighted by TheWrap, both actors responded that a follow-up is unlikely, ending years of studio chatter that began right after the first film’s release.

Johnson, who produced the 2021 adventure, traced the shift to corporate changes for Disney after the pandemic-era theatrical upheaval. He said the company reassessed the property under new leadership and decided it had already taken its main shot with the ride-based franchise. Blunt agreed, framing the decision as a clean stop rather than a pause. Disney declined comment when contacted.

The cancellation closes a chapter that once looked like a sure thing. After “Jungle Cruise” opened in July 2021 with a day-and-date rollout in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access, Johnson announced that sequel talks were active. By late August that year, Disney had formally set a second film in early development, with Michael Green returning to write and director Jaume Collet-Serra expected to come back. Producer Hiram Garcia later said the team had been breaking story for a larger-scale adventure and that both leads were involved in shaping it.

The original movie, inspired by the Disneyland boat attraction, paired Johnson’s wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff with Blunt’s botanist Lily Houghton on an Amazon quest for a mythic healing tree. It grossed about $221 million worldwide on a reported $200 million production budget, a middling theatrical outcome colored by limited global theater capacity and the premium-streaming experiment. Disney has since moved away from simultaneous releases, leaning on longer theatrical windows for big titles.

For Johnson and Blunt, the news comes while they continue collaborating elsewhere, yet it marks a rare retreat from Disney’s wider strategy of mining theme-park brands for franchises. With “Jungle Cruise 2” shelved, the pair’s Pan-American river romp stands as a one-off ride adaptation rather than the start of a series.