Imagine being complacent enough to actually consider buying tickets to see Jaume Collet-Serra‘s Jungle Cruise when it opens on 10.11.19. Imagine being that pliant, that willing. The Disney pic has been shooting in Hawaii since late May.
Dwayne Johnson mentions the example of The African Queen, which was released 67 years ago, and the Charlie Allnut and Rose Sayer characters (played by Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn) that Johnson and Emily Blunt‘s characters (Frank and Lily) are presumably based upon.
What percentage of the potential Jungle Cruise audience has even heard of The African Queen, much less seen it? What percentage of this percentage would care one way or the other? The culture that knows and cares about classic 20th Century cinema is fading fast.
Boilerplate: “Frank, a boat captain, takes his sister and her brother on a mission into a jungle to find a tree believed to possess healing powers. All the while, the trio must fight against dangerous wild animals and a competing German expedition.”
I’m betting that none of the Jungle Queen guys — Collet-Serra, Johnson, Blunt or costars Edgar Ramírez, Jesse Plemons and Paul Giamatti — have ever laid eyes upon the actual African Queen. Tatyana and I visited the original scow, which is moored in Key Largo, on 11.20.17.