Jason Statham Joins Giant Shark Movie ‘Meg’

Steve Alten’s ‘MEG: A novel of deep terror’

There are a few shark movies released the last years, to name some ‘Deep Blue Sea’, ‘The Shallows’, the ‘Shark Attack’ series and so on and so on. But I expect ‘Meg’ (shortcut for “Megalodon” a giant shark, which lived 2,6 million years ago) to be a qualitative movie, not only because of the cast.

The movie will hit theaters 2^nd March 2018, so there will be a lot of time to learn more about the movie. But one thing we can definitely announce is the name of the main cast and it’s none other than Jason Statham. We all know Jason Statham is famous for his strong characters like, Frank Martin in ‘Le Transporteur’ or Chev Chelios in ‘Crank’.

So it pretty surprised me, when they announced Jason Statham as part of a giant shark movie. Most of the giant shark movies are pretty trashy, but still with a cult factor and the advanced possibilities of animation, could make this giant shark movie a qualitative one. We also heard, that Eli Roth was Warner Brothers Picture first choice of director, but he quit the project recently. So now Warner Brothers Pictures decided to give Jon Turteltaub the reins and so filming is set to begin later this year in New Zealand and China.

What is ‘Meg’ about?

Naval Captain Jonas Taylor an expert sea diver, encounters an unknown creature in the deepest trench in the ocean, the Mariana Trench. The discovered unknown danger forced him to abort his mission and left half of his crew abandoned. This tragically incident happened five years ago and cost him his career and his marriage. Taylor first tries to forget about this all, but the Meg decides to go on a hunt at the surface of the water and so he decides with his remained crew to hunt this giant shark to put it to a stop.

Background to ‘Meg’

‘Meg’ is going to be an adaption of the New York Times best-selling Sci- Fi and Horror novel ‘MEG: A novel of deep terror’, which was published in July 1997 from writer Steve Alten. The novel follows the underwater adventures of a U.S. Navy deep sea diver, Jonas Taylor who discovers the giant creature. ‘MEG: A novel of deep terror’ appeared as a series and Alten already published four sequels and one prequel, after the first novel.

Here are the following books and their publishing dates:

‘MEG: A novel of deep terror’ July 1997

‘MEG: Primal Waters’ May 1999

‘MEG: Hell’s Aquarium’ July 2004

‘MEG: Night Stalkers’ June 2016

‘MEG: Origins’ August 2011 (prequel)

I’m curious if that possibly means, that we’ll may see more than just one movie of ‘Meg’ and Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor. We’ll keep you updated about the movie and I bet there will be more great news coming out soon.

The cast so far

There aren’t a lot of cast members announced yet, but we’ll keep you updated on here.

Jon Turteltaub director

Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor

Bingbing Fan as Suyin Zhang

I know the first book was released back in 1997, but should we do a review about the book, before the movie hit theaters? Let me know in the comments below, or on twitter.