Snakes on a Plane
2006 film directed by David R. Ellis

Snakes on a Plane is a 2006 American action thriller film directed by David R. Ellis and starring Samuel L. Jackson. It was released by New Line Cinema on August 18, 2006, in North America and the UK. The film was written by David Dalessandro, John Heffernan, and Sebastian Gutierrez and follows the events of dozens of venomous snakes being released on a Boeing 747-400 in an attempt to kill a trial witness.
The film gained a considerable amount of attention before its release, forming large fanbases online and becoming an Internet phenomenon, due to the film's title, casting, and premise. In response to the Internet fan base, New Line Cinema incorporated feedback from online users into its production, and added five days of reshooting. Before and after the film was released, it was parodied and alluded to on television shows and films, fan-made videos, video games, and various forms of literature.
The film received mixed reviews and was a "box office disappointment". Despite the immense Internet buzz, the film's gross revenue did not live up to expectations; it earned US$15.25 million in its opening weekend. The film grossed US$62 million worldwide before its release on home video on January 2, 2007.
Plot
After witnessing crime lord Eddie Kim brutally murder prosecutor Daniel Hayes in a secluded forest in Hawaii, Sean Jones is escorted by FBI agents Neville Flynn and John Sanders on a Boeing 747-400 to testify in a trial against Kim in Los Angeles. Kim arranges for a time-release crate full of venomous snakes to be placed in the cargo hold in an attempt to bring down the plane before it reaches Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Snakes on a Plane” as 2006 film directed by David R. Ellis. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2006 film directed by David R. Ellis. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q822660. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 2007.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Snakes on a Plane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.