New 'Jumanji: Open World' Trailer Lets the Game Loose on the Real World This Christmas

For 3 decades, ‘Jumanji‘ has been a story about what happens when a game gets too real. The 1995 original had the jungle spilling into a small town, and the modern reboots flipped the idea by sending teenagers into a video game. Now the franchise is closing the loop, and a new trailer shows what that looks like.

Sony Pictures has released a fresh trailer for ‘Jumanji: Open World’, the third and final chapter of the modern adventure trilogy. It follows ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ in 2017 and ‘Jumanji: The Next Level’ in 2019, and it reunites director Jake Kasdan with Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan. The film arrives exclusively in theaters on Christmas Day, December 25.

The new footage opens with a series of scenes showing jungle animals rampaging through suburbia during the Christmas season. That is a big shift for a franchise that has spent 2 films inside a game world. The premise, according to Sony’s synopsis, is that the heroes have escaped the perilous jungles before, but this time Jumanji breaks free of its console and unleashes its chaos into our world.

A new trailer for ‘JUMANJI: OPEN WORLD’ has been released. In theaters on December 25. https://t.co/mqTSTGPPwl
— The Hollywood Handle (@HollywoodHandle) October 28, 2026

The trailer shows Johnson, Black, Hart and Gillan in the real world as stilted versions of the video game avatars they play. Their characters, Dr. Xander “Smolder” Bravestone, Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon, Franklin “Mouse” Finbar and Ruby Roundhouse, are stuck in what appears to be demo mode. That gives the cast a fresh way to play the fish-out-of-water comedy that made the earlier films work.

Body-swapping is also back. Nerdist notes that the trailer suggests someone’s mom, now inhabiting the body of Dwayne Johnson, could end up being the group’s best hope for survival. The franchise has long been a comic showcase for the 4 stars, who play a wide variety of characters from the real world, and the new movie pushes that further by adding more personalities to the mix.

The returning ensemble includes Alex Wolff, Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner and Ser’Darius Blain as the original players, along with Nick Jonas, Danny DeVito, Awkwafina and Rhys Darby. Newcomers include Burn Gorman, Nasim Pedrad and Brittany O’Grady, and Lamorne Morris and Bebe Neuwirth are also listed in the cast. It is a large group for a film that already has a large central quartet.

Kasdan directs for the third time and co-wrote the script with Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg. Johnson, Kasdan, Matt Tolmach, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia produce. Johnson has also been promoting the film himself, sharing a new look under the banner of one final game.

The release date has moved. The film was originally set for December 11, but its date was delayed by 2 weeks in March 2026 to Christmas Day. The full title, ‘Jumanji: Open World’, was revealed at CinemaCon in April 2026.

A Christmas release suits the series. ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ opened in December 2017 and ‘The Next Level’ in December 2019, and both were sizable successes. The new film leans into the setting with its suburban holiday chaos.

The trailer also draws on the franchise’s roots. It begins with the video game world escaping to the real world, a throwback to the plot of the 1995 ‘Jumanji’. That nostalgic touch may help the finale appeal to viewers who have followed the story from the beginning.

Because ‘Open World’ is billed as the final film in the series, it carries added weight. Fans will want to see how the story wraps up the storyline Johnson hinted at years ago, including the identity behind the game’s villain. The trailer does not answer that question, but it suggests the stakes are bigger than another jungle trek.

For now, the draw is the cast chemistry. Johnson, Black, Hart and Gillan have turned avatar comedy into a reliable crowd-pleaser, and bringing those characters into the real world gives them new material. Whether the formula still works in a finale remains to be seen on December 25.