It’s the remake we didn’t know we needed but we’re getting it. Columbia Pictures has announced that they are remaking their 1997 creature-feature, Anaconda.
The new take will be similar to the one taken by The Meg & it will be an all-new and all-modern approach to the concept. The studio has hired Evan Daugherty, who has worked on such tentpoles as Tomb Raider and Snow White and the Huntsman, to write the script.
The 1997 original starred Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer and Jonathan Hyde & followed a documentary film crew in the Amazon that comes across an obsessed hunter looking to find a legendary anaconda. The hunter derails the expedition for his own purpose, with the filmmakers now forced to contend with a murderous madman and a giant snake that will squeeze the life out of them and swallow them when he’s feeling hungry.
The film was destroyed by critics and even earned some Razzies BUT it was very successful at the box office, grossing $136.8 million worldwide on a $45 million budget &, by some miracle, insiders say the title has proved to be one of the most profitable in Sony’s library. It went on to spawn one theatrical sequel and three direct-to-home releases.
Sony, of course, is being careful by not calling it a sequel or remake. The studio is aiming to take what was a simple and relatively cheap programmer with a B-movie concept and eventize it in scope and budget, similar to 2018’s The Meg which grossed half a billion dollars worldwide.
