Kevin Hart dodges creepy-crawlies and Dwayne Johnson’s pranks in Jumanji: Welcome To the Jungle

THE bugs and serial trickster Dwayne Johnston pushed Kevin Hart to the edge on the Hawaiian set of the next Jumanji film.

FORGET the raging rhinos that are featured in the trailer ... supersized creepy crawlies were Kevin Hart’s biggest challenge on the set of Jumanji: Welcome To the Jungle in Hawaii.

“I don’t like bugs,” admits the actor/comedian during a break in filming at Kualoa Ranch, which has provided the rainforest backdrop for a string of Hollywood blockbusters including Jurassic World and Kong: Skull Island.

Hart is sharing his current work environment with giant centipedes that can grow up to 20cm long as well as spiders the size of a man’s hand.

“I am not big with insects and animals. It’s not a secret,” says the Ride Along star, who was born and raised in Philadelphia.

Not any more.

Welcome To the Jungle, a stand-alone sequel to the 1995 Robin Williams classic, reunites Hart with his Central Intelligence co-star Dwayne Johnson alongside a star-studded line-up that includes Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Bobby Cannavale and Nick Jonas.

Johnson, a serial prankster, has been taking full advantage of Hart’s insect phobia — adding insult to injury by posting the actor/comedian’s horrified reactions to his 12.2 million Instagram followers.

“My fear is getting bit by a centipede,” says Hart.

“DJ knows that.”

When it comes to paying The Rock back, however, Hart is quietly biding his time.

“I’ll save the best till last,” he says.

“Because I play too much. My pranks will make you mad.”

Serial prankster Dwayne Johnson took full advantage of co-star Kevin Hart’s fear of insects on the set of Jumanji: Welcome To the Jungle.

Hart’s one consolation, when the lush, tropical set is giving him a bad case of the heebie-jeebies, is that none of Hawaii’s wildlife can actually kill him.

Had the plum project been shot in Australia, Hart says, he would have turned it down.

“The good thing about shooting (in Hawaii) is that there are no real crazy animals,” he says.

“I wouldn’t have done a movie in a jungle in Australia. No way. Hell no. Because there is nothing you can do to control it. I don’t care what anybody tells me. “Everything in Australia can kill you. And it’s there. It’s 100 per cent there. So I am not going to go to the habitat where the killer s--- is.”

Hart’s response to Australia’s wildlife is so fervent, you have to wonder whether the Gold Coast, where Johnson filmed San Andreas, was mooted as a possible location at some point in pre-production.

Hawaii’s wild boars have also caused the city boy some serious consternation.

But thankfully, the snakes, elephants and aforementioned rhinos his character encounters in the Jumanji reboot are to be created in post-production.

“Yesterday I sat on a hard-arse barrel for five hours because that was supposed to be our elephant,” says Hart.

Set 20 years after the events of the original film, Welcome To the Jungle is the brainchild of producer Matt Tolmach (Rough Night, The Amazing Spider-Man).

“I’ve always loved Jumanji. I loved the book and the movie.”

“At the time (of its release), it was a massive breakthrough. It was one of the first movies where that sort of CG was done There was a sense of: ‘oh my god, look what they can do’.”

Nick Jonas, Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Jack Black and Kevin Hart in a scene from Jumanji: Welcome To the Jungle.

Like director Jake Kasdan (Bad Teacher) and screenwriter Chris McKenna (The LEGO Batman Movie), Tolmach felt the time was ripe to re-imagine the much-loved adventure fantasy through the prism of new technology.

In Welcome To the Jungle, four students stumble across an old video game while cleaning up their high school basement as a punishment for errant behaviour.

After choosing their avatars, they are sucked into the console, emerging on the “other side” as characters that are the polar opposite of who they are in real life.

“The game knowingly challenges who they are,” observes Tolmach.

Nerdy germophobe Spencer (Alex Wolff) transmogrifies into a pumped up action hero named Dr Smolder Bravestone (Johnson) while popular high school jock Fridge Johnson (Ser’Darius) is demoted to the role of Bravestone’s reluctant sidekick Moose Finbar (Hart).

Martha the bookworm (Morgan Turner) kicks some serious arse as the scantily-clad Ruby Roundhouse (Gillan) but it’s self-absorbed beauty Bethany (Madison Iseman) who is in for the biggest jolt when she discovers that she has suddenly become an overweight, middle-aged man (Jack Black’s Professor Shelly Oberon).

The island of Jumanji, it turns out, has fallen under a curse. To restore order to this parallel universe, and thus return home, the four players must replace a jewel stolen by Bobby Cannavale’s villain, Van Pelt, from the Jaguar Temple.

“It’s a simple journey but getting home is incredibly complicated,” says Tolmach.

Welcome To the Jungle was shot on location in Hawaii, at Kualoa Ranch, Waimea Valley Park and Heeia Kea Jungle, over a two-month period, and in Atlanta.

Like Hart and the rest of Welcome To the Jungle’s cast and crew, the characters struggle with their physical environment.

Kevin Hart on the run in Jumanji: Welcome To the Jungle.

“We are using the practical locations to challenge our characters,” says Tolmach. “Because the idea is that they are jumped into the jungle and then pursued by all kinds of things that can very possible kill them and in some cases possibly do.”

Oberon’s chances, after being swallowed by a giant hippopotamus in the trailer, don’t look promising.

It’s visual effects supervisor Jerome (Suicide Squad) Chen’s job to conjure up the terrifying creatures that pursue our four heroes.

He is sympathetic to Hart’s horror of the Hawaiian centipedes.

“We are thinking of putting them in the movie because there is something primordial about them,” he says.

Most of Chen’s CGI animals, however, are significantly larger and more dangerous.

“It was important for (director) Jake (Kasdan) to create a genuine sense of jeopardy. That you can die here. So that it’s not just a game without any stakes,” explains Tolmach.

“Emotionally, one of the things I love about this movie, and I mention The Wizard Of Oz reverentially, is that these characters come away with the idea that maybe all of us have those heroes inside of us, that we just haven’t embraced that part of ourselves.”

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle opens in Australia on Boxing Day.

Originally published as Kevin Hart dodges creepy-crawlies and Dwayne Johnson’s pranks in Jumanji: Welcome To the Jungle