There was no shortage of snake skin boots, jackets and dresses on Saturday’s red carpet premiere for the latest addition to the Anaconda franchise.
Film stars Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Steve Zahn, Thandie Newton and Selton Mello were joined by director Tom Gormican and hundreds of raucous fans eager to celebrate the return of the massive snake to the big screen in downtown Los Angeles.
The new movie exists somewhere between a reboot, reimagining and spiritual sequel to the original camp classic Anaconda, which was released in 1997 and starred Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and John Voight as they hunted — and were hunted by — the film’s titular monster reptile. In the 2025 version, Black and his friends decide to shoot an ultra-low-budget remake of the original in the Amazon rainforest, as things go hilariously and horrifyingly wrong.
“I loved the filmmaker’s previous movie — the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent with Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal is just so great. The fact that Paul Rudd was attached was like, oh dude, this is a slam dunk, and I told my agent, ‘Just say yes,’” Black told The Hollywood Reporter of joining the film. “He said, ‘No, you have to read the script.’ I was like, ‘OK, OK, OK.’ Then I read the script and it was a slam dunk. I thought it was so brilliant. Yes, it’s a really great meta horror comedy for our times.”
The cast was joined on the red carpet by Ice Cube, who also has a comedic cameo in the film, as Rudd spoke about what it meant to have the seal of approval from the iconic rapper and actor.
“It means everything. That’s like being blessed by the Pope,” he joked. “You go over, you kiss the ring and he gives you a pat on the head and says, ‘Good job, son.’”
Paul Rudd and Jack Black at the premiere.
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
While the film-within-a-film showcases a series of escalating disasters for the crew, Gormican shared that the real production had its own share of problems, including a massive storm that nearly destroyed the movie’s third act.
“Halfway through, we lost a location for the finale of the movie, so I had to rewrite the entire finale of the movie while making the movie. And we found all these old boats and made this boat junkyard with all these things; it was a massive set and we had just finished it. And then the first cyclone in 50 years hit Australia and destroyed it,” the filmmaker recalled. “I just thought, ‘This is like a filmmaking reality show. What else could go wrong?’ So we pieced it all together, turned the generators on, they didn’t explode, and we thought, well, let’s do it.”
The director added that another challenge was getting Black, Rudd and Zahn to stop having fun long enough to shoot the movie.
“Getting these guys to stay focused is insane — once they’re acting, it’s OK. It’s in between takes where Jack is belting out a song and then Paul is coming in and Steve is singing. At a certain point, Paul was playing drums. Selton Mello, our Brazilian actor, was on the guitar, and I was like, I don’t even know what this is but it’s not directing,” Gormican teased. “I was just sort of waving and being like, please, at a certain point we have to make Anaconda or [Sony Pictures chairman] Tom Rothman’s going to kill me. At least it’s a good time.”
Comedy has been in short supply in theaters over the last few years, with studios largely relegating the genre to streamers. However, Rothman told THR he’d like to change that: “People like to laugh and the thing about movies and movie theaters, they’re communal experiences and there’s nothing more communal than a bunch of people laughing together. So I have no idea why there aren’t more comedies, but we’re going to make ’em.”
Anaconda hits theaters on Christmas Day.
