Jack Black and Paul Rudd Reboot Anaconda as a Meta Comedy — Mid-90s B-Movie Gets a Hilarious Glow-Up
Jack Black and Paul Rudd finally team up — and they’re reviving Anaconda in a wild new guise you won’t see coming.
We finally have a creature feature I can get behind: the new Anaconda is not a straight remake of the 1997 Jennifer Lopez snake movie. It is a weird, very self-aware riff where the giant snake still munches people, but the story is actually about four childhood friends who set sail to make their own spiritual sequel on the cheap. Yes, the movie is about making an Anaconda movie. And yes, the snake still shows up to ruin everyone’s day.
So what is this version, exactly?
Jack Black and Paul Rudd star as Doug and Griff, lifelong buddies who rope their two other day-one friends (played by Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn) into reviving Anaconda with a grand total of 48,000 dollars. That is the in-movie budget, to be clear. They hire a boat captain, played by The Suicide Squad standout Daniela Melchior, who is very much not telling them everything. It’s a meta reboot about making a sequel to a movie that, let’s be honest, not many folks were begging to see remade. The original sits at 39% on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason.
Why Rudd and Black said yes
The hook wasn’t just the snake; it was the tone. Director and co-writer Tom Gormican previously made The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, the Nicolas Cage comedy that winks at you while it’s winking at itself. Rudd, who was already a fan of that one, says this new Anaconda taps the same vein.
"Which was a meta version and a very original take on something that was clever and funny and the right mix of really smart and not as smart."
Black, currently riding the Minecraft wave, kept it simple: most scripts don’t make him laugh; this one did. Hard. He read it and immediately felt it hit the comedic sweet spot he does not see often.
Who is doing what here
- Director/co-writer: Tom Gormican (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent)
- Griff: Paul Rudd, spearheading the friends’ DIY snake sequel
- Doug: Jack Black, Griff’s equally delusional co-conspirator
- Lifelong friends: Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn, pulled into the 48,000-dollar adventure
- Boat captain: Daniela Melchior, carrying secrets the guys definitely should have asked about
The Rudd/Black pairing, finally
Somehow, these two have never properly teamed up until now. The closest they came was a quick bit years ago as Paul McCartney and John Lennon in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Rudd has been a Black fan since spotting him in Bob Roberts, and he even turned up to press wearing a Jack Black T-shirt plastered with Jack’s greatest hits. He called getting to do an entire film with Black a legit dream come true.
Black admits the Rudd factor was the big lure. He loved the idea, but he wanted to be sure Rudd was actually locked before signing on. He has seen the old bait-and-switch where a big name evaporates after you say yes, and he wasn’t about to get caught holding the snake bag.
Release plan
Anaconda slithers into theaters on December 25.