Jack Black, Paul Rudd Circling Reimagining of Horror Movie ‘Anaconda’

Columbia Pictures is hoping to squeeze out a new Anaconda movie for the 2020s.

Jack Black and Paul Rudd are in early talks to star in a reimagining of the 1997 horror movie that launched a mini-franchise.

Tom Gormican, who directed the Nicolas Cage meta movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, is co-writing with collaborator Kevin Etten and will direct the feature.

The original movie starred Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Ice Cube and Jon Voight, and followed a National Geographic film crew who is hunting for the world’s largest and deadliest snake, only to find the tables turned.

According to sources, the new story involves a group of friends facing mid-life crises who are remaking their favorite movie from their youth. They head to the rainforest, only to find themselves in a fight for their lives against natural disasters, giant snakes and violent criminals.

It’s unclear who is playing whom. One source said Black would play an erstwhile director, a man stuck in his job as a wedding videographer, while Rudd would play an actor who did a stint on a cop show but sees his Hollywood dreams slipping further and further away. Another source said it was the other way around.

The project has been percolating at the studio since early 2023 and has gone through many rewrites as the filmmaker and Columbia tried to find the right balance of tones.

Fully Formed, the banner run by producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, is producing the project. Form recently signed a first-look deal with Sony division Screen Gems.

Columbia, a division of Sony, does have reason to return to the jungle with the title. The initial movie grossed $136 million at the global box office and went on to quickly reach cult classic status. Anaconda was followed by a series of films, including installments in 2004, another theatrical moneymaker, before descending into schlock fare with two movies that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2008 (that one starred David Hasselhoff) and 2009.

The last Anaconda outing was in 2015, when the horror franchise was paired with the crocodile-centric Lake Placid series for a horror comedy titled simply, Lake Placid vs. Anaconda. Yanby Butler and Robert Englund starred in that one.

Black was recently in theaters with voice work in Borderlands, Kung Fu Panda 4 and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. He is also set to star in the Minecraft movie for Warner Bros. The actor, who worked with Sony on the hit Jumanji films, is repped by Sloane Offer.

Rudd was last in theaters with Sony’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. His upcoming slate includes the A24 feature Death of a Unicorn and John Carney’s latest music based drama Power Ballad. He is repped by UTA and Lighthouse Management.

On top of writing and directing Massive Talent, whose script landed on the Black List, Gormican was a writer on the recent Beverly Hills Cop movie, Axel F. He is repped by CAA and 3 Arts Entertainment.