Tom Gormican, director of the new Anaconda, has shared how he secured cameos from Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube, stars of the 1997 original. The film, released on Christmas Day 2025, reimagines the story as a meta comedy about friends filming their own version in the Amazon. It blends humor, adventure, and horror while poking fun at Hollywood reboots.
Tom Gormican and co-writer Kevin Etten pitched their reimagined Anaconda to Sony as "The Big Chill becomes Anaconda," expecting rejection but securing approval. "We went to them and said, ‘If we could make ‘The Big Chill’ becomes ‘Anaconda,’ then we’d be interested,’” Gormican recalled. The result is not a reboot or remake but a fresh tale of middle-aged friends—Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Steve Zahn, and Thandiwe Newton—heading to the Amazon to shoot a homemade version of the 1997 film, only to face a massive CGI-enhanced snake.
Gormican emphasized respecting the original while avoiding its direct structure. “These are two stories about taking a boat up the river, right?” he said. “A snake basically slithers on land or in the water. It can either wrap around you or bite you. So you’re locked into the ways that it kills, and you’re locked into a structure of going from point A to point B, which is what this shares with the original story…I have a lot of reverence for the original. I love what they did. [But] I didn’t want to play in that sandbox.”
The film incorporates meta humor, with the characters encountering a Sony crew filming an Anaconda reboot and joking about Hollywood's lack of ideas. They also stumble upon Ice Cube on a snake-destroyed set, where he notes the script remains unfinished. Jennifer Lopez joins him in a cameo as themselves, providing a nod to the original. Gormican aimed for cameos from surviving cast members once the reboot-filming plot emerged. “We were always thinking that it would be fun to have the surviving members,” he explained. Other original actors were considered but excluded due to their characters' deaths.
Production faced setbacks in Australia, including a factory strike and a cyclone destroying a boatyard set, which Gormican repurposed in the film by attributing the damage to the snake. Influences include City Slickers and American Movie, evolving the genre from buddy comedy to horror. Gormican hopes it recaptures communal cinema joy: “The thing that I’ve been missing in my cinema-going experience is a movie for everyone, that plays in a massively fun, adventurous way.” The film premiered on December 25, 2025, and includes post-credits cameos from the original stars.
