Disney’s Jungle Cruise Movie Gets Jesse Plemons as Additional Villain

While sure, the idea of Disney making live-action films about classic Disneyland rides seems silly on paper, the world-wide phenomenon of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise lends credence to the concept. That doesn’t mean we’re going to see a Matterhorn film or anything, but there are few rides I enjoy more than The Jungle Cruise. Announced almost two years ago, Jungle Cruise is rounding out its cast this week.

Yesterday Edgar Ramirez (ACS: Versace) was announced as joining the film in a villainous role “with a conquistador background”, so this gives us an idea of just how many bad guys we’ll be getting.

Today, Jesse Plemons (Fargo, Game Night) was also announced as playing a Jungle Cruise villain, but no information about his character was released.

We’ve known for a while that the film will be set in the 1920s, and through various interviews and comments, star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has revealed the flick will take no small influences from Indiana Jones and, surprisingly, The African Queen:

“[It’s] full on adventure. Think Indiana Jones — those kinds of adventures. I’m very, very excited about it.

This is where I really started to understand the power of Disney, just in terms of the deep dives that they do with their projects — with all of their projects. Because obviously they’re a studio and publicly traded, but specifically with projects like this where it’s based off a ride and based off an beloved attraction, like Pirates [of the Caribbean], so, so much goes into the work. And it’s so exciting.”

Pair this with the additions of Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place, Mary Poppins Returns) and Jack Whitehall playing sister-and-brother characters, this already seems like a film I’m going to love.

Johnson is a boat captain who takes a sister (Blunt) and her brother (Whitehall) on a mission to find a tree believed to possess healing powers. Wild animals and a competing German expedition figure into the proceedings.

Jaume Collet-Serra is directing, and Oscar nominee Michael Green (Logan) wrote the most recent version of the script.

Jungle Cruise currently has no set release date and is obviously still in the casting phase.