Naman Shrestha
Based on the 1997 eponymous movie directed by Luis Llosa, ‘Anaconda’ is an action–adventure comedy movie helmed by Tom Gormican. The narrative follows two childhood best friends, Doug and Griff, who have always dreamed of remaking their favorite movie, ‘Anaconda.’ When midlife crisis strikes, the two friends team up with a couple of more friends, Kenny and Claire, in order to turn their childhood dream into a reality. The four friends embark on a wild adventure and travel to the wilderness of the Amazon to begin shooting their version of the 1997 film.
However, in an unexpected turn of events, their production is disrupted when an actual gigantic anaconda emerges on their set and begins hunting them down. Thus, what begins as a light-hearted shoot turns into a fight for survival. Starring Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Steve Zahn, Thandiwe Newton, Daniela Melchior, and Selton Mello, the survival tale of the four childhood friends primarily unfolds in the Amazon, with the dense jungles serving as an additional character and the lair where the dangerous creature hides.
Anaconda Filming Locations
The shooting for ‘Anaconda’ was reportedly conducted entirely in Australia, particularly in different parts of the state of Queensland. Principal photography for the reboot got underway in January 2025 and continued for less than two months before wrapping up by the end of February of the same year. At the end of the shooting process, Selton Mello, who portrays Santiago Braga, described his time on the set as an unforgettable experience.
Queensland, Australia
To create the visual canvas of ‘Anaconda,’ the cast and crew headed to Queensland in the northeastern part of Australia. Many spots in the state doubled up for the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil in the film. A significant portion of filming took place in and around the Gold Coast. Since the movie features several sequences that require a controlled environment, the production team chose to utilize the services of Village Roadshow Studios at Entertainment Road in Oxenford on the Gold Coast. The studio offers several fully-equipped sound stages and production offices alongside spaces for editing, makeup, wardrobe, etc. The underwater sequences were likely shot in either one or many of the three purpose-built water tanks in the complex.
Many movies and shows like ‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,’ ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,’ ‘The Lost World,’ ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,’ ‘Jungle,’ and ‘The Shallows’ were taped in the aforementioned studio. According to reports, the decision to lens the film in Queensland paved the way for the generation of over 300 jobs and resulted in an overall economic boost of approximately $40 million. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Steve Zahn, who plays Kenny, opened up about reuniting with Jack Black and Paul Rudd, with whom he has shared screen space in separate films before. He said, “… every day (on Anaconda) was an absolute joy. We hung out in a little tent on set, eating hummus and carrots. We told stories and bitched. It was really great fun.”
In a scene in the film, Kenny shoves a dead squirrel in Jack Black’s character Doug’s mouth. Speaking about Jack’s reaction while taping the sequence, Steve shared, “He was covered in goo with that boar taped to him for two days, and he was a trooper, man. I would’ve been out of my mind. When you do something like that on set, you channel memories. You’re thinking, ‘How do I get through the day with all this? I’m just going to try to remember everybody in my third grade class.’ When you get a head cast done, you go into that world. You think of things, like, ‘I’m going to walk through my childhood house.’ So I think he was channeling.”
The actor expressed that the cast and crew had a lot of fun bringing the fun-packed film to life on an Australian set. In contrast to Steve, Thandiwe Newton, who appears as Claire Simons in the film, had a spine-tingling experience while they were shooting on the Tweed River near the Gold Coast. In conversation with the Courier Mail, she revealed that when she was in the bathroom of a boat shed, she encountered a “spider the size of a grown man’s hand” while washing her hands in the sink. “The hair on my back bristles straight away and I think ‘I am going to die.'”
Thandiwe continued, “You know when you are so scared you can’t make a noise when you scream? Thank God I’d already used the rest room because I would definitely have wet myself. So I went racing out saying ‘Guys, guys, guys. I just saw a spider this big.” The native crew members then explained to her that it was a non-venomous huntsman spider. “Literally all the Australian crew are just laughing at me for making such a big deal about a non-poisonous huntsman spider, but I have never been more scared in my life,” she concluded. From Thandiwe’s spider-encounter to Paul’s late-night shoot in a swamp and a Drop Bear prank on Jack, the cast and crew members certainly had a lot of adrenaline-inducing moments over the course of production.
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