The Journey to the Center of the Earth franchise is an interesting one. Nobody really thinks about it as a studio tentpole but quietly it has done extremely well.. The first starred Brendan Fraser and Josh Hutcherson before he was that 'Hunger Games' dude, and it was a bigger than expected hit in 2008 with $240M. All that success didn't stop producers from trading up, dumping Fraser and signing "franchise Viagra" Dwayne Johnson, with Journey 2: The Mysterious Island taking over $315M. A sequel was quickly announced but nothing has been heard about it until now, and it turns out this this journey is far from over.
According to THR, two more 'Journey' sequels are on the way with The Conjuring writers Chad and Carey Hayes writing the screenplay. Most importantly, New Line Cinema was able to bring back Johnson (and his "pec pops of love"), while Hutcherson is also expected to return. To accomodate their busy schedules the hopes is to shoot the two films back-to-back. The Hayes Brothers will be taking over from another pair of writing siblings, Brian and Mark Gunn, who wrote Journey 2 and were expected to pen the third. That's changed now and apparently so have plans to adapt Jules Verne's book, From the Earth to the Moon, as the last film had teased. Instead a new direction is what is being crafted, one that may veer from Verne's novels completely.
This will be a reunion of sorts for Johnson and the Hayes Brothers as they wrote his upcoming 3D disaster flick, San Andreas.
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