Sony Pictures Classics has released the first official trailer for Anaconda, a reimagining of the 1997 cult favorite that brings Jack Black and Paul Rudd together as filmmakers set on making…well…a reimagining of Anaconda.
…Wait, really?
In the trailer, seen above, Black and Rudd play filmmakers who want to reboot Anaconda on a microbudget…but find themselves up against the wall when their snake dies. Journeying into the jungle to find a replacement, the duo — joined by a crew that includes Steve Zahn, Thandiwe Newton, Daniela Melchior, and Selton Mello — instead find themselves on the receiving end of a snake hunt.
The trailer has a similar energy to Zahn’s Sahara or Black’s Jumanji reboot, proving that writer/director Tom Gormican has an eye toward deconstructing his own cast as much as he is the Anaconda franchise itself. Of course, as the director best known for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, that shouldn’t be surprising.
In the world of the new Anaconda, the original movie (and presumably its numerous less-prestigious follow-ups) exist…and they’re what has inspired best friends Doug and Griff to attempt a reboot.
In the real world, Anaconda earned over $125 million at the box office in 1997, spawned three sequels and a spinoff. Its only theatrical sequel, Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orhchid, earned just $71 million, pushing the third and fourth movies into the territory of movies made for TV, DVD, and streaming. Prior to the reboot, the most recent Anaconda movie was 2015’s Syfy original Lake Placid vs. Anaconda.
Here’s the film’s official logline, which gives you a sense of how Sony plans to market the beast: Doug (Jack Black) and Griff (Paul Rudd) have been best friends since they were kids, and have always dreamed of remaking their all-time favorite movie: the cinematic “classic” Anaconda. When a midlife crisis pushes them to finally go for it, they head deep into the Amazon to start filming. But things get real when an actual giant anaconda appears, turning their comically chaotic movie set into a deadly situation. The movie they’re dying to make? It might just get them killed.
Anaconda arrives in theaters this Christmas.
