Anaconda Why The Horror Movie Has So Many Famous Stars

Anaconda: Why The Horror Movie Has So Many Famous Stars

Anaconda has gotten a bad reputation due to its cheesy take on the “monstrously huge animal” horror trope. Surprisingly, the movie had an A-list cast.

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Anaconda Why The Horror Movie Has So Many Famous Stars

Despite its bad reputation, Anaconda had a star-studded cast like few other horror movies of its kind. Much like Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws, the original Anaconda promised to spawn another enormous wild monster who would hunt down a group of resilient people one by one. The movie delivered on the action, the threatening sight of the animal, and its prominent cast, but soon evolved into a series of over-the-top sequels with increasingly unrealistic snakes.

Anaconda opens with a nameless poacher (Danny Trejo) who commits suicide when he discovers a monstrous snake in the Amazon River, but the true protagonist of the movie is Terri Flores (Jennifer Lopez), a documentary film director who seeks the Shirishama tribe in the Amazon. Her crew is composed of cameraman Danny Rich (Ice Cube), sound engineer Gary Dixon (Owen Wilson), anthropologist Steven Cale (Eric Stoltz), production manager Denise Kalberg (Kari Wuhrer), visionary Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde), and boat skipper Mateo (Vincent Castellanos). The last member to join the crew is Paul Serone (Jon Voight), a snake hunter who’s actively chasing the massive anaconda.

Nowadays, Anaconda is regarded as a cult classic at best and a cheesy Jaws ripoff at worst, especially when its three subpar sequels and its crossover with the Lake Placid franchise are taken into consideration. But when the original movie was in development, the main objective was to create another serious, killer animal-centered film that would rival Spielberg’s horror classic. The first step to accomplish it was to gather an A-list cast, going as far as considering stars such as Cameron Diaz, Sean Connery, Will Smith, Gillian Anderson, and Jean Reno before the final cast was assembled.

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In 1997, Anaconda managed to gather an accomplished group of actors back when they were promising stars. For instance, Ice Cube was fresh off Boyz n the Hood and Friday and had a remarkable music career with N.W.A and as a solo artist. Jennifer Lopez had just delivered her breakout performance as Selena Quintanilla in the biopic, Selena, earlier the same year. On the other hand, Owen Wilson only had two acting credits under his belt at the time, Bottle Rocket and The Cable Guy. Jon Voight had a long and fruitful career, having won an Academy Award for Coming Home in 1978, and starred in Michael Mann’s 1995 crime thriller, Heat, but he was definitely not known for horror. However, it also helps how most of the cast has built an even more successful career since the film was released.

Horror movies, regardless of how they hold up decades after their release, have served as a gateway genre for future Hollywood stars. For instance, Josh Hartnett is best known for his performances in Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, and The Black Dahlia, but actually had his film debut in the slasher Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. Similarly, Leonardo DiCaprio had his film debut in the low-budget horror film, Critters 3, which went direct to video. Tom Hanks’s career started with the slasher He Knows You’re Alone, and George Clooney had his first role in 1987 with Return to Horror High.

If there’s one area the original Anaconda hit the jackpot with, it was definitely the casting choices. There was no way to assure that the actors were going to continue rising the way they did, but their experience at the time was more than enough to understand how much they could contribute to the movie. Not everybody starts out like Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street, but a memorable horror movie—for better or for worse—can always be a good landmark in an actor’s career.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/anaconda-movie-famous-actors-jennifer-lopez-owen-wilson/

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