The re-adaptation of existing IP has become such a ubiquitous practice in Hollywood that the industry has started eating its own tail, and filmmakers are referencing the IP itself in increasingly metatextual ways. See: Scream V and VI. See: The Studio. We are no longer content to recycle material, we now have to editorialize on the recycling job as it is being done. The whole thing feels like an apologia for money-making. “We’re sorry we’re doing this,” executives seem to say, “but of course, we must.” In the wake of Wicked: For Good and its pre-ordained, outsized success, Universal Chief of Marketing Michael Moses told Vulture that they “have almost a responsibility” to continue the story. Responsibility is a strong, coded word for “this will make us so much money we won’t be able to see past the stacks of cash.” But with respect to Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, the Wicked franchise is not a civic service. In other words, this is cinema’s ouroboros moment. Or, for Tom Gormican, who has already shown a fascination with the self-mythologizing of Hollywood iconography with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, any big snake will do. Anaconda is not a remake of the 1997 original of the same name but a weak-fanged satire of the same industry that would see no inherent irony in doing so. Funny and surprisingly sweet yet ultimately as boneless as a snake, Anaconda aims to be Bowfinger for a new generation but ends up feeling as insipid as the film it is loosely based on. Its target audience is people nostalgic for the salad days of studio blockbusters, who are righteously frustrated with executives for cashing in on material they don’t understand.
As a natural antidote to the data-tested, AI-adjacent slop created by chicanerous machinery, Gormican and co-writer Kevin Etten turn to a a team of lovable losers with genuine passion for the schlocky original. Pure-hearted wedding videographer Doug McCallister (Jack Black), is a true amateur: someone who creates out of love. That Doug and his best friend, Griff (Paul Rudd), an adorably inept actor, zero in on Anaconda, of all movies, as the film upon which they wish to stake their lives and artistic souls, is exceedingly, comically, ridiculous. Griff has come back to Buffalo to be at Doug’s surprise birthday party where he reconnects with his other childhood friends Claire (Thandiwe Newton) and Kenny (Steve Zahn), at which he presents two gifts: the last remaining VHS copy of The ‘Quatch, a creature feature the crew made in middle school, and news that he has secured the rights to Anaconda. Griff is struggling to make much of himself in Los Angeles, Kenny was just fired from Doug’s company, and Claire just got divorced, so he suggests they all go to Brazil and make a skeleton crew-led, bare bones re-imagining. Or, more like a spiritual sequel. Or is it a new adaptation? Whatever, they’re gonna do it. It’s nice that Gormican gets to the meat of the action efficiently, but a lot of stuff here is written so haphazardly it’s hard to get a grip on it. Griff’s procuring of the rights is glossed over in so quick a manner that the other characters don’t have time to question how it is possible he has it at all, which seems like a natural thing they’d do. And, it would be nice if the criminally underused Newton had more to do than just be divorced and (kind of) sad about it. Doug, established so quickly as an obsessive cinephile, is oddly the only person to hold out on the idea of going to Brazil, but he gets there eventually through the help of his devoted wife, Malie (Ione Skye, whose role also offers little meat on the bone). Yet they eventually get to Brazil, where they run into Ana (Daniela Melchior), an adventurer dressed like Tomb Raider who’s mysteriously on the run from some scary-looking goons. Unbeknownst to the film crew, she has stolen the houseboat they rented from her for their production as a means to escape capture. We are told next to nothing about Ana, nor why she is running, nor from whom, until the film’s third act. Between Melchior, Skye and Newton, the women in the film have been given little to do except support their male counterparts. When we do learn more about Ana, Melchior has the opportunity to kick proper tail, but as a character her motivations are entirely suspect even after the whole plot is laid out. Zahn is the best part of this main cast, essentially playing the non-affluent version of his character from Season One of The White Lotus. In Kenny, he is an oafish, blundering, sweetly pathetic, yet loyal-to-a-fault friend, whose perpetually-scrunched neck and affixed half-smile is endlessly funny. Gormican brings Black back to earth in just the right way for his boisterous tendencies, and Rudd is Rudd: charming and goofy, but here a little washed out by the bigger personalities around him. But the film sometimes uses him for strange gags, like a tedious recurring joke about his inability to pee in public. Less helpful to the laughs is Selton Mello, who starred in Walter Salles’ sober I’m Still Here, who’s tasked with a buffoonish role as the crew’s snake handler. The Brazilian actor is too stone-faced for Gormican’s lighter touch, but it’s not entirely his fault when the writing is so uneven. The film tries to make a meal out of his devotion to the snake he is supplying for the film, but it’s unclear what’s so funny about loving a pet, even to his character’s extremes.

Watching a less-than-capable film crew try to make a passable version of a big budget horror film is a good enough time. The film does what it’s supposed to do. Of all its skewering of Hollywood’s legacy sequel trend, the most acute joke is a runner about how the film needs “themes.” Is it about climate change? Grief? Intergenerational trauma? “I LOVE intergenerational trauma,” Doug screams in agreement. Later, Griff suggests the film could earn awards consideration, if they play their cards right. “You’re like the white Jordan Peele,” he says. “I was thinking the same thing.” Implicitly, Gormican’s movie takes a jab at self-congratulatory studio filmmaking whose pusuit of greatness is divorced from the reality of the film that’s delivered.

As corny as it is, however (and in ways that Kenny references directly), Anaconda’s theme is just about how fun it is to make art with your best friends. It may elicit some eye rolls, but what makes the film work when it does is that it turns back the clock for anyone who has been so focused on making money they have forgotten to enjoy the work they do.

Release Date

December 24, 2025

Runtime

100 minutes

Director

Tom Gormican

Writers

Kevin Etten

Producers

Andrew Form, Brad Fuller