The shark movie has become a staple horror subgenre ever since audiences heard those two notes of John Williams’ daunting Jaws score in 1975.
Forty-plus years later, there have been many additions to the B movie tradition, some good (Deep Blue Sea), some bad (Shark Swarm), and some inexplicable (Sharknado), but in 2018 The Meg proved that they can still be a box office hit.
The Jason Statham-led shark movie – centred on a mammoth, 70-foot sea creature believed to have been extinct for millions of years – made a staggering £415 million at the international box office making it one of Warner Bros’ most profitable original films of the year.
Audiences have loved shark movies ever since Jaws hit screens in 1975.
So what makes a shark movie a box office hit? The Meg director Jon Turteltaub gives us the lowdown in his own words… Spoilers ahead.
Know the genre
The fin shot is a must for all shark movies
Jon Turteltaub: Like every movie, you have to first understand the genre and what people expect. Then you focus on a good story with good characters. Sometimes you succeed, and sometimes you don’t. You don’t run away from the cliches, you lean into them. I think audiences expect them and like them.
With a shark movie, you better see that fin, you better see under the water legs dangling – we love all that stuff and we want to see people dying in really cool ways. That’s what you expect and why you’re going to these movies.
Suspense is key
The Meg movie
First of all, you want to set deaths up so the audience is not sure if it’s going to happen or not. You don’t necessarily want these to come out of nowhere. The start of these movies is the suspense so the person in the water instantly gives you that sense of “oh no.”
The worry about what’s going to happen is actually more interesting and enjoyable for an audience than the death itself. Unless there are two people in the middle of getting married and they love each other and it eats one of them. There’s not that much emotion attached unless it’s one of your major lead characters otherwise you just like watching how they’re going to die but mostly are they going to die? What’s going to happen, what are the choices they make?
I really like the death of Dr Heller [in The Meg] because he chooses to die to save Jaxx. The shot of him dying, for me, it’s the most realistic shark shot in the movie because it’s more of how we see sharks rather than how movies see sharks.
The kill list
The Meg movie
We really pondered this and that really starts with the writers. Have we killed too many people? Have we killed enough people? But a movie like this you are really paying attention to entertainment value. Nobody thought we were going to win a Nobel Prize when we made this movie, our job is to put on a really fun show so you’ve got to figure out not just how many people die, but who too.
What’s the price, what’s the cost? The more you love a character the more often it is for them to die but there is a point at which, when that character dies, the audience hates you. In our case, it’s a dog! A lot of people were telling me, “what was this dog doing in the movie, we have all these people to kill?” and all I could think of was people always care more about a dog than a person.
The audience is always on the dog’s side
If there is a dog trapped in a building and you get him out everyone starts crying. If there is a person trapped in a building and you get him out the audience is like” oh cool, glad he’s safe.”
Making the shark
They didn’t want it to look like a Great White Shark
You have no idea what a complicated process that is because it’s more than having good ideas for the shark but finding those who can realise them. Getting everyone to agree on those ideas is hard too. Everyone has their own point of view, starting with the writers of the novel, to the producers who bought the novel, to the studio who is paying for the movie, then to me who just wants to do what I want to do.
That debate of “gigantic great white shark versus creating our own” went on for a long time and I’m glad I got the shark I wanted because I didn’t want the great white, that seemed very low budget for me. It looks like you took a regular great white shark and just made it bigger in the cheapest way possible rather than figuring out what a shark would have looked like millions of years ago, how it would have survived in the ocean and all that sort of stuff.
Balancing the visual effects
The visual effects had to make the shark look as real as possible
I feel, as a director, you have to make a decision and decide if you want to scare the audience because it’s real or do something that is really cool. I tend towards real; I want things to feel like real life rather than “look how cool this shot is how the camera can jump off the boat and go through the shark’s mouth and come out the gills” and all that stuff.
With visual effects, you can do that, and there are directors who are amazing at doing all that, but for me, I tend to get pulled out of a movie when I can see the director’s hand showing me how cool they are. So I try to create images that feel more real because when you do that it makes the shark look more real and one of the things we talked about was to never let the shark do something that the shark wouldn’t do.
Levity is a must
Rainn Wilson brought a lot of comic relief
That was super important to me. Our approach was very tricky because we tried to thread the needle with the notion that the characters in the movie have seen shark movies in their lives. Let’s not pretend they don’t know the cliches or have seen movies like this so you can lean in a little bit to the humour.
Let the characters be funny in these extreme situations. I had people saying “do you want it real or do you want it funny?” I don’t know the difference. That’s part of life.
More than a hero
Jason Statham makes you feel safe, says Turteltaub
We knew we needed the guy who you could believe was a badass hero and could save the day. Jason [Statham] for me took care of the first part, which is much harder to find than you think, but we wanted a person who when you walk in a room you feel safer. You feel like everything is going to be OK and Jason brings that too.
He also brings the counterpoint of a sense of humour. He had done a bit of comedy in his movie but he’s never, with the exception of Spy, he’s never been asked to do too much and I think that’s a mistake. You want to believe these super macho guys have another side to them.
Sequel?
The Meg is out on digital download now
Sequels usually suck and try to outdo the first one where there’s a bigger shark, ninety sharks, or a poisonous shark and that’s not what audiences want to see. They want to see a really good story that they couldn’t think of themselves.
But now that I’ve said it, poisonous sharks sound really cool.
The Meg is available on Digital Download now and on DVD and Blu-Ray from December 10.
Jon Turteltaub in this exclusive interview and wide-ranging conversation talks about making The Meg, wanting to push harder for an R rating, what they wanted to accomplish with the film, why it took so long from filming to reach theaters, what he learned from test screenings, why he thinks audiences sees a sequel, how the Asian marketplace for movies impacted making The Meg, and more. In addition, he talked about the status of National Treasure 3, how his first cut of National Treasure was close to four hours, and more.
Director Jon Turteltaub narrates a sequence on the water with Statham going up against one very big shark.
In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series each Friday. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” The director Jon Turteltaub borrows this line from “Finding Nemo” and gives it to Jason Statham for a tense scene in the giant-shark thriller “The Meg.” It’s one of a few surprising moments in this sequence, narrated by Mr. Turteltaub.
For a moment when Mr. Statham bobs in and out of the water looking for the menacing Megalodon of the title, Mr. Turteltaub was inspired by GoPro footage on YouTube of divers doing the same in shark-filled waters. This wild sequence is a mixture of footage shot on location, in water tanks and on a soundstage, then blended using digital effects. “It’s a lot,” Mr. Turteltaub says.
Turteltaub was photographed July 25 in his Malibu home office.
Ahead of his first international co-production, set to hit theaters Aug.
10, Jon Turteltaub talks tackling the marine predator genre, working
with China and why Jerry Bruckheimer said "undersea movies are boring
and don't work."
Director Jon Turteltaub knew he was gonna need a bigger shark. After
all, if you're going to tackle the genre these days, you'd better bring
something new to the table, since the undersea apex predator has been
reimagined in countless forms, from flying sharks to robot sharks and,
yes, even zombie sharks.
So, for his waterborne action thriller The Meg, the 54-year-old director, whose career has bounced between smaller fare like 1993's Cool Runnings and big-budget studio spectacles like the National Treasure franchise, decided the best course of action was to go big — really big. Arriving in theaters Aug. 10 from Warner Bros., The Meg
pits action star Jason Statham against a giant prehistoric shark called
a megalodon. Lured to the project by producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura,
Turteltaub finished principal photography in December 2016, with the
film's hefty budget (studio insiders say $130 million, but sources peg
it as high as $150 million) ensuring that the 90-foot-long beast didn't
look, as he puts it, "really stupid." The Meg also marks Turteltaub's first international
co-production; the movie was co-financed and co-produced by Gravity
Pictures, the film studio of entertainment conglomerate China Media
Capital, which recently raised $1.5 billion. "A strong, healthy Chinese
film industry is going to teach us more about China than CNN is," says
the L.A. native. Set against the thematically appropriate backdrop of
the Pacific, Turteltaub sat down with THR at the Malibu home he
shares with his wife, producer and philanthropist Amy Eldon, and their
three children, to discuss the anxieties of making a big-budget studio
movie and the advice from Jerry Bruckheimer that he didn't heed.
Eric Ryan Anderson
A note from President Barack Obama to Turteltaub’s sons Jack, now 10, and Daniel, now 8. He also has a daughter, Arabella, 3.
Eric Ryan Anderson
Turteltaub and Eldon at their wedding. Eldon is co-founder of the nonprofit Creative Visions Foundation.
How do you make a modern shark movie in Hollywood? I get asked the shark-movie question a lot. I'm not totally sure there is such a thing as a "shark movie." After Jaws, the shark movie became a thing, but it also became a pretty pointless thing compared to Jaws. So how do you exploit what Jaws got everyone interested in, knowing you'll never be that good? I remember when I was making Cool Runnings
and someone saw an early cut and they said, "It's pretty good." And I
said, "What do you mean pretty good? Isn't it awesome?" — as a joke. And
they said, "Well, it's not like you set out to make the greatest movie
ever." And I realized, yes, actually, I did. Every director on every
movie sets out to make the greatest movie of all time. And along the
way, you have realizations that that's not going to happen and you're
just trying to make the best movie you can. I probably wanted to be a
moviemaker because of Jaws, so truthfully, I set out to make the second best shark movie of all time. And I hope we did it. What is it like making a blockbuster that isn't based on a well-known IP? These days it's scary. My job is to just make that movie, but I'm
fully aware that in the marketplace, in spite of the public complaining
that everything is a sequel or a superhero, they're not living up to
their complaints with the tickets they buy. It does give you plausible
deniability for your lack of success. (Laughs.) What did you take away from making a Chinese co-production? When you enter the film business, it doesn't take long to realize
that once a film starts shooting, it is a train wreck that you cannot
stop. In development and in postproduction, you can maybe get more
involved [as a financier]. And they did. That's normal. [But] in this
case, it's hard to anticipate the needs because you don't know what
their cinematic sensibility is and you don't know what their system
requirements are. There's a lot to be said, written and studied about
the Hollywood-China relationship that's probably best done in a book and
not by somebody about to release a movie. How have you seen studio franchise filmmaking change since the '90s and 2000s? I've been through eras where the studios want to make as many movies
as possible and as few movies as possible, as expensive as they can be
and as inexpensive as they can be. If you look at an action film from 25
years ago, there were two action scenes, right? Now they have two
nonaction scenes. The audience just wants more and more and more. They
want lots of cool shit. [But] if [audiences] don't give a shit about the
people in the movie and the characters, then they don't go. It's
awesome to watch Iron Man blow shit up, but you go to see Tony
Stark be the smartest guy in the room. That said, if the effects in a
Marvel movie stunk, people would be pissed. So they didn't get any
cheaper. On every single movie, either the visual effects house is
getting ripped off or the studio's getting ripped off. [That's why] we
have these companies going into and out of business. We haven't figured
out how to make that system fair and consistent.
Eric Ryan Anderson
This vintage elevator pointer
hung outside his Disney office. “Everyone thought my door was the
elevator and would stand there, waiting.”
What's the "cool shit" in The Meg? Because it's a first movie, not a sequel, you can't just throw money
at stuff. You've got to be smart and pick your spots. And our spot we
picked was the shark. Jerry Bruckheimer always warned me and said,
"Undersea movies are boring and don't work." Because everything is slow
and it doesn't feel real. And I realized how right he was when I
suddenly found myself making a Jason Statham action film without
gunfights, without fistfights and without car chases. What's left? There
was a lot of pressure on us to show the shark early and often because
today's audiences want to see it a lot. Here was the other big
challenge: When you have a giant version of an animal, it immediately
can look stupid and weird and "movie fake." But you can tolerate a lot
more when it has a face. King Kong is a brilliant movie character
because you spend the whole movie fearing him and the last 10 minutes
in love with him. You cannot fall in love with a shark face. They have
no eyebrows, they don't smile or frown, their eyes — you can never see
the two eyes at the same time. It's just the antithesis of what humans
have affection for. And that limits you as a director. I want people to
fear the Meg, but I don't want them to hate it.
What would a National Treasure movie look like in today's political climate?
It is amazing how many people in Washington assumed I was a
Republican because the movie is patriotic. I think today the movie would
do just as well and is even more needed. The National Treasure movies
stay away from politics, but they stay true to political idealism. And
it bugged me that conservatives thought that these are only conservative
ideas. The ideas in National Treasure are all of us, neither conservative nor liberal. Do you think there is room for a third National Treasure movie? Every person I know wants to make National Treasure III,
with the exception of the people who are in charge at Disney. They
don't feel it needs to be made. But Jerry and Nic [Cage] and I — Jon
Voight and Helen Mirren and everybody else — we're ready to go.
Eric Ryan Anderson
A note from Last Vegas star Michael Douglas. “When you get a compliment from someone you idolize, it will be your best compliment,” says Turteltaub.
How do you think the Disney-Fox deal and other studio mergers will affect filmmakers? Certainly the lack of variety of studios can easily make for a lack
of variety of films. It's hard to say what's more significant, the fact
that there aren't as many studios as there used to be, or the fact that
one studio has six studios inside it. Disney's pulled these things
together in a very smart way so that the people who are best at
something focus on that thing. As a director, though, it might make the
world a little cliquey. It gives you the advantage of being on the
inside when you're on the inside, but it also puts you on the outside,
and [it's] hard to break in. But I will say that with all the changes
that have taken place over the years, it's hard to put your finger on
anything that has made movies better or worse. Movies are either good or
bad for their own reasons. Whether you're competing with TV, whether
you're doing it with black and white or color, whether you're just
making superheroes or just making romantic comedies, they find their way
to suck all on their own.
Something very big is about to rise from the ocean’s unfathomable depths to seriously rock Warner Bros. Pictures’ new sci-fi action thriller “The Meg.”
That very big something is the titular creature – a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark – in “The Meg,” a pulse-pounding thrill ride and outrageously fun movie event that combines action and humor and pits action superstar Jason Statham in a head-to-head battle with a mammoth megalodon.
Large-scale action is familiar territory to director Jon Turteltaub, who previously helmed blockbuster adventures like “National Treasure” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”
The Meg — or, to give it its full name, Carcharocles megalodon — was a species of shark that lived on seals, giant turtles and whales until its extinction around 2.6 million years ago. It was a true monster, so huge it would have made the great white in Steven Spielberg’s seminal summer movie “Jaws” look like a minnow. It certainly captured the imagination of author Steve Alten, who wrote a science-fiction novel that envisioned the return of such a creature to modern-day waters, published in July 1997 as Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror. It was a success, and five sequels followed.
Instrumental in getting “The Meg” made into an event motion picture was producer Belle Avery, who after reading the novel instantly thought: “This is a great popcorn movie. People like to go see monster movies, but if those monsters are real creatures that actually existed, I think you’re much more ahead of the game, because people want to go and see what they looked like.”
Deciding what the Meg looked like was not quite as straightforward as you might imagine. “One school of thought was to make it look like a 75-foot-long great white,” says Turteltaub. “Because when you look at a great white, an audience instantly goes, ‘Uh oh!’ And a 75-foot ‘Uh oh!’ is pretty scary. But, I wanted to create a shark that was a little less developed, a little less perfect, a little uglier and more specific to what life might have been like deep in the ocean three million years ago.”
The novel theorized that megalodons could have survived extinction by moving to the warmer, high-pressure depths of ocean-floor ravines like the Mariana Trench. And in this movie, it is in such an abyss that the terrifying Meg is discovered by a high-tech Chinese deep-sea exploration operation named Zhang Oceanic, overseen by Li Bingbing’s character, Suyin. It won’t be long before the Meg finds its way back up to the surface waters, which are now filled with a tasty new snack: humanity.
For Turteltaub, the appeal was to sink his teeth into “an entire movie genre I’d never worked in. I get to play in a whole new sandbox, so to speak, with a whole bunch of different movie rules. I like the pure fun of it. And I also like the challenge of making a Jason Statham action movie with no car chases, no fist fights or guns,” he adds with a laugh.
“Jerry Bruckheimer warned me about making undersea movies,” says Turteltaub, referring to his producer on the “National Treasure” movies and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” who had plenty experience of his own filming on water with the “Pirates of The Caribbean” movies. “As soon as you go underwater, everything moves very slowly and is not conducive to action. I’ve had Jerry’s voice in my head the whole time, ready to say, ‘I told you so’. So, we had to work out how to keep things exciting with that challenge. And the way to do that was to mix up what’s underwater and what isn’t, while also building on the element of surprise and playing on what you can’t see. At any moment something really, really scary can happen. And that keeps the audience on edge.”
Diving into Philippine cinemas nationwide August 8, The Meg will be released in 2D, 3D and 4D in select theaters, as well as in IMAX, Dolby Cinema, and other large premium formats. The film is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Entertainment Company.
About “The Meg”
In the film, a deep-sea submersible—part of an international undersea observation program—has been attacked by a massive creature, previously thought to be extinct, and now lies disabled at the bottom of the deepest trench in the Pacific…with its crew trapped inside. With time running out, expert deep sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) is recruited by a visionary Chinese oceanographer (Winston Chao), against the wishes of his daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing), to save the crew—and the ocean itself—from this unstoppable threat: a pre-historic 75-foot-long shark known as the Megalodon. What no one could have imagined is that, years before, Taylor had encountered this same terrifying creature. Now, teamed with Suyin, he must confront his fears and risk his own life to save everyone trapped below…bringing him face to face once more with the greatest and largest predator of all time.
Rounding out the international main cast of “The Meg” are Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, Page Kennedy, Jessica McNamee, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Robert Taylor, Sophia Shuya Cai, Masi Oka and Cliff Curtis. Read more
Meg star Jason Statham says the film is a cross between Jaws and Jurassic Park. A long-standing horror sub-genre is the killer animal film in which one of nature’s many predators seems to decide that they’ve had enough of humanity, and decides to take their frustrations out on any unfortunate person unlucky enough to cross their ferocious path. One of the most popular subjects of such a film is the killer shark, which makes perfect sense as sharks are one of the world’s most efficient killers, despite the instances of them actually attacking humans in real life being rare.
When it comes to killer shark flicks, the seemingly eternal gold standard is Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic Jaws, which is well known for making an entire generation of moviegoers afraid to take a dip in the ocean. In more recent years, there have also been a lot of science fiction-melded shark movies, such as 1999’s Deep Blue Sea – featuring sharks with enhanced intelligence – and the various Syfy originals that often feature a mad scientist messing with shark genetics seemingly for the fun of it.
The latest film to fit comfortably under both the sci-fi and killer shark banners is Meg, an adaptation of author Steve Alten’s popular 1997 novel of the same name, which itself has spawned four additional books in the Meg series, all written by Alten. Directed by Jon Turtletaub (National Treasure), Meg stars Jason Statham as expert diver and former Navy captain Jonas Taylor, who is called into action in order to save a trapped group of Chinese scientists from a gigantic prehistoric megalodon. When speaking about Meg during a recent appearance on the Jim & Sam radio show, Statham made a rather bold proclamation about what viewers can expect:
“I just did a movie about a shark. It’s a cross between, I’d say, Jaws and Jurassic Park. It turned out really good. I mean, apparently. We don’t know until we see it. It’s called Meg, as in megalodon.”
While Meg’s various plot parallels to both Jaws and Jurassic Park are obvious, Statham opting to directly invoke both legendary Spielberg properties when talking about his latest project is a brave move, as it instantly elevates the level of expectations Meg will likely carry with audiences. On a side note, Statham’s gruff but heroic diver character also somewhat echoes a similar character portrayed by Thomas Jane in the aforementioned Deep Blue Sea, which did of course hit theaters two years after the release of Alten’s book.
With last year’s fairly sizeable hit The Shallows serving to raise the theatrical profile of killer sharks for the first time since the rise of campy efforts like Sharknado, fans of the sub-genre essentially created by Jaws are likely to pin their hopes on Meg to further reestablish the aquatic predators as a creature to be feared instead of laughed at. Only time will tell whether Meg succeeds, and takes a bite out of the summer 2018 box office.
Warner Bros. has moved back “Meg” to Aug. 10, 2018. It was previously dated for March 2, 2018.
Warner Bros. has moved back Jason Statham’s prehistoric giant shark thriller “Meg” to Aug. 10, 2018.
It was previously dated for March 2, 2018, and would have opened against an untitled Fox/Marvel film. The movie will be released in 3D and Imax. “National Treasure” helmer Jon Turteltaub is directing the film with Chinese actress Li Bingbing co-starring with Jessica McNamee, Ruby Rose, and Rainn Wilson. Shooting began in New Zealand last fall.
Giant Shark Movie ‘Meg’ Had A Ridiculously Complex Journey To Screens
Macmillan
It seems strange that Hollywood hasn’t already made a movie where Jason Statham fights a giant shark, which is more or less the plot summary of Meg, a movie that just cast Rainn Wilson as the well-meaning billionaire who unleashes said giant shark by mistake. But Meg is a movie with a decades-long history of not getting made that lays bare just how hard it is to make a movie that seems like a slam dunk.
Meg first pinged Hollywood’s radar in 1997, when the thriller of the same name from prolific thriller author Steve Alten first hit bookstores. Alten’s book was practically designed for Hollywood: It followed Navy SEAL and diving expert Jonas Taylor, who stumbles over a giant shark in the Marianas Trench and is immediately dismissed as a crackpot. He goes back to help retrieve a submersible and a series of accidents unleashes the giant shark on the ocean. Alten’s mix of old-school monster movie and Tom Clancy-esque technothriller was unique, and he’s kept returning to the concept with five other novels.
Alten’s book was, quite literally, optioned before it was printed. Alten’s agent used the plot to tempt Disney into optioning the novel and then turned that around to get Alten a publishing deal. But before Disney could start building sharks, Deep Blue Sea, a movie about sharks with human intelligence eating Samuel L. Jackson, went into production, so Disney held off. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Renny Harlin’s gleeful B-movie did okay at the box office, but wasn’t the globe-spanning hit Disney was hoping to see. Disney threw Meg back, but it didn’t stay in for long, as in 2004, the producers behind Hellboy, along with the editor of CHUD.com at the time, Nick Nunziata, optioned it for Guillermo Del Toro to direct.
Unfortunately, as fans of his many, many abandoned projects can tell you, Del Toro’s eyes are often bigger than his stomach. So, in 2007, it went to another filmmaker, Speed director Jan de Bont. De Bont, by the way, hasn’t directed a movie since 2003’s Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life, and in 2010, Meg was released into the wild yet again.
Aside from a brief mention in 2011 from Alten that the movie was back on track, Meg was dormant until 2015, when it was announced Eli Roth was taking over directorial duties. What changed?
The short answer was that China was interested. Just as The Rock and Matt Damon have turned up in Chinese-funded projects, Meg will largely be paid for by obscure production company Gravity Pictures, which will distribute it in China. But even with the funding on lock, there was still the matter of finding a director, as Roth left and was replaced by National Treasure director Jon Turteltaub.
It seems Meg has finally escaped production hell. In addition to Wilson, Orange is the New Black star Ruby Rose and Chinese megastar/pop singer Fan Bingbing have signed on, and Meg is on track to arrive in March 2018. But, of course, if the giant shark has learned anything from Hollywood, it’s that even a sure thing may be harder to make than it looks.
Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, who appeared in X-Men: Days of Future Past, has joined Jason Statham in Meg, the creature feature being made by Warner Bros. and Chinese company Gravity Pictures, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.
At the same time, Warner Bros. has set a March 2, 2018, release date for the pic, which will be directed Jon Turteltaub, best known as helmer of the National Treasure movies. Gravity will distribute the film in China, while Warners will release it throughout the rest of the world.
Dean Georgaris wrote the latest script for the project, which has been swimming upstream for 20 years in order to adapt the book by Steve Alten. It centers on a Carcharodon Megalodon, the 70-foot, 40-ton prehistoric kin to the great white shark.
The studio put forth the plot of Meg as such:
An international underwater observation program, led by Chinese scientists, is under attack by an unknown danger, and its deep-sea submersible lies disabled and trapped at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. With time running out, former Naval Captain and expert deep sea diver Jonas Taylor (Statham) is recruited by Dr. Zhang Suyin, lead oceanographer of the program, for what is likely a suicide mission.
Years before, Taylor had encountered this same terrifying threat, which forced him to abort his mission and abandon half his crew, resulting in disgrace and a dishonorable discharge. Now, Taylor must confront his fears and risk his own life to save everyone trapped below … bringing him face to face once more with the apex predator of all time.
Warner Bros. has set a March 2, 2018, release date for its prehistoric giant shark thriller “Meg.”
“National Treasure” helmer Jon Turtletaub will direct the film and Jason Statham will star with Chinese actress Fan Bingbing.
The film will be co-financed by Flagship Entertainment; Gravity
Pictures, a division of China Media Capital (CMC); and Warner Bros.
Gravity Pictures will distribute the film in China, with Warner Bros.
handling the film throughout the rest of the world.
The story is based on Steve Alten’s novel “MEG: A Novel of Deep
Terror,” published in 1997 with the title derived from the ancient
Megalodon species that has survived while being trapped in the Mariana
Trench due to a barrier of cold water.
The “Meg” movie is centered on an international underwater
observation program, led by Chinese scientists, being under attack by an
unknown danger with its deep-sea submersible disabled and trapped at
the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Statham will portray a former Naval
captain and expert deep-sea diver, who’s recruited for a likely suicide
mission — even though he faced the predator years before and was forced
him to abort his mission and abandon half his crew.
Statham came on to the project in April. Principal photography will begin later this year in China and New Zealand.
After forming joint venture Flagship Entertainment in Hong Kong in September last year, Warner Bros. and China Media Capital (CMC) have announced plans for the production and global release of a dozen movies under the Flagship Entertainment banner over the coming two years. Chinese news website china.org.cn reported Warner Bros. chairman Kevin Tsujihara as saying the high-quality co-productions would appeal to a wide demographic of audiences both in China and around the world.
According to CMC chairman Li Ruigang, the film package would include an adaptation of best-selling science-fiction novel MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten and cost over $100 million to produce. MEG tells the story of a deep-sea diver who while diving in the Mariana Trench is attacked by what he believes to be a megalodon, a gigantic predecessor of modern sharks thought to have been extinct since the Pleistocene era. Nobody believes him, but as the events unfold he encounters more of the creatures, some of which manage to make their way to the surface and wreak havoc. Read more at Film Journal
