Disney’s latest effort to capitalize on its park-based IP is a film based on its theme park ride, Jungle Cruise. The film is set to hit theaters (and as a premier offering on the studio’s streaming service, Disney+) in July, and ahead of that release, we’ve got a new trailer that shows off an Indiana Jones-like adventure featuring the Rock and Emily Blunt.
Jungle Cruise the ride is one of Disney’s oldest attractions, taking park goers along rivers on a 1930s steam boat, where they take in the sights of jungle creatures and ruins. Earlier this year, Disney began to update the ride to remove racist depictions of native peoples.
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The film picks up the basic premise of the ride, and follows a captain named Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) while he ferries a scientist and her brother—Dr. Lily Houghton (Blunt) and McGregor Houghton (Jack Whitehall)—as she searches for a mythical plant that possesses some advanced healing properties. Along the way, they deal with hostile natives (hopefully, the studio’s taken the time to consider how they’re depicting them), supernatural creatures, a German submarine captain (deliciously played by Jesse Plemons), and the dangers of the river itself. The whole thing has a vibe of Indiana Jones-styled adventure.
The movie was originally slated to be released back in October 11, 2019, only to get bumped to July 2020. (The first trailer came out waaaaaay back in October 2019.) With COVID-19 scuttling most of last year’s theatrical slate, Disney moved the film to 2021. Along with several of its other high-profile releases like Mulan, Raya and the Last Dragon, and the upcoming Black Widow, subscribers can opt to see the film in their own homes, rather than venture out into theaters.
With the launch of Disney+, there’s little surprise that Disney’s been looking to mine some of its IP for new projects—it’s already produced films based on its Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean attractions, and recently brought on Battlestar Galactica and For All Mankind‘s Ronald D. Moore to develop a Magic Kingdom cinematic universe for the streaming service. Given the wild success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (which is also getting a reboot of its own), it seems pretty certain that Disney would love to replicate the success.
