Anaconda 2025 trailer: Paul Rudd and Jack Black’s creature feature remake takes a meta trip to the jungle

The Anaconda reboot was never going to be a straight-forward copy – and it’s not.

The trailer for the Queensland-shot movie starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black dropped overnight, and reveals that rather than follow the story of the 1997 flick, it’s a twist on it.

In the new film, Rudd and Black play two men who want to remake the 1997 movie starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube. Rudd’s character is a background actor and Black’s is a wedding videographer, and are chasing their creative ambitions by doing their own version of Anaconda.

Even if they can’t secure more than $9400 in loans from the bank.

They are joined by their friends Kenny (Steve Zahn) and Claire (Thandiwe Newton) in the Amazon rainforest but run into a snag when the only snake they have for the production is killed early in the process.

Their attempt to procure another reptile goes awry when they encounter an enormous slithering beast. The movie is set for release on Boxing Day.

The film is written and directed by Tom Gormican, whose best known work is The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a film in which Nicolas Cage plays a fictional version of himself as he’s hired to appear at a party by a super-rich fan (Pedro Pascal).

Gormican’s version of Anaconda looks to be as meta (is it a remake or reboot if the original film exists as a fictional story in its narrative universe?) as The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Incidentally, Rudd was a huge fan of that film – during the Australian leg of the press tour for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, he revealed he saw The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent four times. “I love that movie so much, I’m just like, ‘Ohmigod, more of that’,” he said at the time.

Anaconda was filmed in Queensland from December to February with the stars photographed out and about and on set around the Gold Coast. At one point, Rudd was snapped in between takes holding a Bunnings umbrella to shield himself from the sun.

The 1997 Anaconda starred Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde and an early career Owen Wilson. The story centred on a fictional documentary crew and snake hunter tracking a legendary green anaconda.

It was considered a critical misfire and had been nominated for six Golden Raspberry awards, but has been reframed as a cult classic for its schlocky thrills.

Anaconda is in cinemas on December 26