Jennifer Lopez’s Campy Cult Classic ‘Anaconda’ Gets A Reboot

Jack Black and Paul Rudd recently teamed up in a new video to announce the cast of an upcoming Anaconda riff reboot of the 1997 original film starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube.

The song, improvised in the style of Black’s musical Rock group with Kyle Glass called Tenacious D, introduces the cast members with Black behind some acoustic guitar riffs and Rudd playing bongos in the background in the clip.

Black belts out the principal cast, mentioning Thandiwe Newton, Steve Zahn, Brazilian actor Selton Mello, and Daniela Melchior. Afterwards, he riffs on the movie concept by singing, “We gotta kill that snake, and the snake inside. We’re gonna break its neck and cook it on the stove.”

IMDb describes the premise of the reboot as “a group of friends going through midlife crises [that] decide to remake a favorite movie from their youth but encounter unexpected events when they enter the jungle.”

The new cast announced by Black and Rudd will mimic the original cast and also “head to the rainforest, only to find themselves in a fight for their lives against natural disasters, giant snakes and violent criminals,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Black plays a wedding videographer and will play the movie’s director, while Rudd plays a cop-show actor who realized that his dream of becoming a Hollywood actor is a pipe-dream fantasy. Their characters plan to remake their favorite movie in hopes of making it big in the entertainment industry.

Newton and Zahn play their childhood friends, who get roped up in their shenanigans during the plot. Mello’s character is an animal wrangler, and actress Ione Skye will play Black’s onscreen wife. The reboot, which may be titled The Anaconda, was written by Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten and will be directed by Gormican.

The duo have previous worked together on The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which was about a fictionalized version of actor Nicholas Cage who gets caught up between a superfan and a CIA agent. Sony Pictures announced the news of the Anaconda reboot in December 2024 and that its release date is set for Christmas Day 2025.

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