Anaconda Producer On Why It’s Not A Horror Movie & Real Snakes That “Sucked” [Exclusive]

Remember that 1997 cult classic movie Anaconda, starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube, where a giant snake swallowed Jon Voight’s character whole and proceeded to regurgitate him? Gnarly. Well, the 2025 Anaconda reboot couldn’t be further from that. Trading in scares for laughs, this iteration follows wedding videographer Doug [Jack Black] and background actor Griff [Paul Rudd], two childhood besties experiencing midlife blues. To recapture their youth, the pair decides to remake their favorite film, Anaconda. Along with a small crew, the gang embarks to the Amazon, where an actual giant anaconda crashes the shoot and wreaks havoc.

Slithering into theatres on December 25, Anaconda is being produced by Brad Fuller, a co-founder of Platinum Dunes. The production company previously gained attention for its horror remakes Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Amityville Horror. They eventually expanded into sci-fi and action territory with TMNT and A Quiet Place, as well as TV series Jack Ryan and The Last Ship. 

Fuller recently Zoomed with ComicBook about Anaconda’s comedic tone, gigantic reptiles, casting Black and Rudd, as well as his upcoming slate of projects. 

ComicBook: The prospect of a new Anaconda movie has been slinking around Hollywood for quite awhile. How did this iteration come about?

Brad Fuller: A Quiet Place changed a lot of things for us. After the success of the second Quiet Place, we had a deal at Paramount. But other studios were interested in us producing movies for them. We got a call from Sanford Panitch, the president of Sony, and he said, “I have a really great title that I would love you guys to consider.” We were coming off Quiet Place, and I had nothing. We needed development. And he said, “Anaconda.” 

My first reaction was I rolled my eyes. I loved the first one. I saw it in the theatres. I thought to myself that I loved that first movie and I need to find a way to honor that. We went about hearing a thousand takes and everyone of them was the exact same thing. Where do you go with this movie? And then Tom Gormican came to us with this really clever idea. 

It’s about a group of people that are in the mid-portion of their lives. None of their lives have worked out the way they wanted them to. It’s not to say their lives aren’t great, but they never achieved their dreams. As kids, they used to make films together and it never panned out. One of them, the actor played by Paul Rudd, has secured the rights to Anaconda. Just like when they were kids, they are getting back together to go and shoot the movie. Hijinks ensure. 

The part that resonated with me is they are a group of friends who have known each other for so long and go on an adventure together. That reignites their friendship. It is a gutsy move for Sony to say yes to that. 

There’s some confusion over whether Anaconda is a comedy, a horror, a comedy with horror elements or a horror-comedy. How would you define it?

It is 100 percent a comedy. That was the hard part for me. I have never made a comedy before. Going into making the movie, it’s very easy for me as a producer to lean into the things I know. It’s very scary to try to engage in the things that I don’t. We literally started shooting the movie about a year ago. A year ago, the younger version of me would have said, “This is going to be 50 percent horror and 50 percent comedy.” I think that’s what we thought it would be. The difference is when you have Jack Black and Paul Rudd. When you see them together, they are hilarious. 

So, as you are making the movie, you start to recognize that you are not taking advantage of the skillset that all these people really have. By the time we were done, we figured it would be 25 percent horror and 75 percent comedy. As we tested the movie and there were so many funny scenes, we thought, “If you are going to this movie for the horror element, you would be disappointed if it was sold as a horror movie.” That’s not to say that there aren’t moments when the snake isn’t lurking and you are tense. But it’s not like one of our typical movies where people are getting torn apart in different places. It comes back to character and comedy. Even in the scariest scenes, you will laugh if we did it right.

Anaconda gets meta. What was fun about going down that rabbit hole?

That was really scary because as someone who has been working in the film industry for 40 years, it always seems to me that movies about movies don’t work. Although our movie isn’t a movie about a movie, it’s a movie about a group of friends trying to make a movie. The actual making of the film is a tiny portion of our film. In earlier cuts, we leaned more into the meta of it all. The great part of the process of making this film with Sony is that they allowed us to test this movie every week. We literally cut the movie, put it in front of an audience, and then we had data on what was working and what wasn’t. We tested the movie three weeks ago, so we kept refining it to see how much meta was too meta or not enough meta. 

There are still a lot of things in the movie that are meta. There is a scene in the movie where it is discussed that Sony owns the rights to Anaconda. That is a line in the movie. I think Paul says, “Who owns the rights to Anaconda?” It is very meta, but much less so than when we started. 

How did casting come together with Jack Black and Paul Rudd?

I was making a film in Dublin. This was in March a year and a half ago. I was in a restaurant there. I always wanted Paul Rudd for the movie. The studio wanted Paul Rudd for the movie. He had read the script and liked it, but he was working back-to-back. I ran into him in a restaurant in Dublin. I said, “Look, I am producing Anaconda. I really want you to be in Anaconda.” He said, “I want to be in Anaconda. This movie is six days a week. I need a little time to get through it.” That’s the thing I learned with Paul and Jack is that they are so committed to the process, and so we had to wait for his movie to end. Along the way, we got the script to Jack Black. He read i,t and we let him know we were talking to Paul. He says, “If Paul is in, I’m in.” Basically, they both came on at the same time. 

How big is your snak,e and did you rely on CGI or create an animatronic monstrosity?

In terms of the actual size, it’s a hard question to answer because we did not have an animatronic snake. We had a fake snake. If you’ve seen the scene where Paul Rudd is on the boat, there’s a fake snake getting in there. There was never an animatronic snake. It was all ILM. The size depends on the angle the cameras are shooting the snake from. But it is a huge snake. It’s a dinosaur-sized snake.

The snake was really hard to get right. It took a long time. We were still doing shot turnovers on the 5^th of December. It was right down to the wire. We have had that experience with ILM before on A Quiet Place and the Turtle movies. We know they are going to deliver. It’s just a nail-biter.

Did you base that design on research or let your imagination go wild?

We wanted the snake to feel very real so we based it on what anacondas look like. We added some things to make it snakier or make it feel more menacing. Anacondas don’t really have big teeth. They don’t have fangs, so we wouldn’t put fangs on our anaconda even though that would have made it feel more threatening. We didn’t do that.

I will tell you what was scary about the movie. We shot a lot in the forest. My favorite person on set was the snake wrangler. He would come by our tent looking for snakes. In Australia, everything can kill you. There are a lot of poisonous snakes. One night, he caught not fun snakes that certainly added to the scary factor of the movie. We were all terrified of that. It sucked.

Looking at Platinum Dunes’ library, A Quiet Place has made a lot of noise as a franchise. How close are we to seeing a fourth one?

It’s in John Krasinski’s hands because he is writing and directing it. I wish I could give you some information, but I don’t know. I guess when we see a script, we’ll start getting serious about that. Paramount gave a release date of 2027, so I guess they are going to have to start shooting sometime in the second to third quarter of next year, I would imagine.

The Purge stands as another big franchise in your stable. Director James DeMonaco is interested in helming another installment. Apparently, actor Frank Grillo is also all in for it. Are there any updates on that sequel?

First of all, I love working with James, and I am glad he wants to come back. I love being on set with James. He understands the Purge universe better than anyone else since it came out of his brain. I always like when a creator comes back and directs another installment. And Frank and I are friends. I think he is so good for that franchise. I would love for Frank to kick ass all day long. I know James is working on a script. I haven’t seen it yet, but we would love to do another one. 

IMDB lists a Michael Bay movie, Outrun, in pre-production. What’s that about?

We are in the early stages. Right before you called, I was saying to Bay, “I have to get off the phone. I need to do this thing.” Outrun is based on a Sega video game. It was a driving game in the ’80s. Bay has always wanted to do a driving movie. I am very invested in Sydney Sweeney. She has been supportive of our company for a long time. I felt since Sydney has brought us two things that I would like to return the favor. Outrun is perfect for her. Sydney actually works on her own cars. That’s not fake. She is a gearhead. I put Michael with Sydney at Universal, and I think they are starting to figure out the script right now.

Platinum is responsible for plenty of horror reboots and remakes. Is there an IP that you are still aching to get your hands on?

I wish I could have done Halloween, but Blumhouse did a great job. For us as a company, we have done so many movies. What’s more interesting to me now then it was 25 years ago, is to take a title that is known as one thing and do a different thing, like we did for Anaconda or what was done on 21 Jump Street. That seems more interesting to me than going out and remaking someone else’s movie. It was a great way to start my career. I learned so much about filmmaking because you could watch the original and go, “Let’s do this different,” but it gave me a world map of what our movie was going to be. That was really helpful to me as a young producer. When we did Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there weren’t a lot of horror remakes.

Anaconda is in cinemas now. You can read ComicBook’s review below. Have you seen it? What did you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

Jack Black and Paul Rudd Are the New Abbott and Costello in Anaconda (Review)