SPOILERS for Anaconda. Consider yourself warned. Anaconda, the meta-reboot of the 1997 cult hit starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube, has arrived in theaters, but in true Hollywood fashion, director Tom Gormican shot a last-minute cameo only weeks before the premiere of the film.
Who Makes a Cameo in Anaconda?
Anaconda actually includes two cameos from the original film. The first, an appearance from Ice Cube, has already been spoiled in trailers and is a little more substantial, but the second features none other than Jennifer Lopez. Getting JLo involved was something the team wanted to happen from the very beginning, but the schedules didn’t align until the last minute.
“That was also a product of reshoots,” Gormican told THR. “We tried to get it as part of principal photography, but we couldn’t make schedules coordinate. We had always wanted a version of her to come in, and we talked about it and talked about it and talked about it. I was finally able to shoot her cameo a month ago on November 17. It was the very last thing we did. I was finishing up my final mix when I went to shoot it, and I dropped it into this [mid-credit] sequence that I was having built to accommodate it. I never thought it was going to ultimately materialize, but it did, and we put it together. So it happened very, very late in the game, but we did have the idea a long time ago.“
What Do Critics Think of Anaconda?
Anaconda has received mixed reviews, with our own Chris Bumbray finding it to be a largely humourless effort.
“It’s a tame PG-13 holiday farce that settles for mild, toothless humor and isn’t nearly as incisive about reboots—or even the original Anaconda—as it should be,” Bumbray wrote. “The film goes even further off the rails once the mutant, man-eating anacondas show up, with Gormican awkwardly trying to juggle carnage and comedy. Ironically, the original 1997 Anaconda—which played everything straight—is at least ten times funnier than this intentionally comedic version.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.
