Director Ben Wheatley (Rebecca, Free Fire) is set to helm the sequel to the 2018 Jason Statham-starring sharksploitation blockbuster The Meg, and now, the filmmaker has teased what fans can expect from the film as well as stating he intends to honour the scope of the titular Megalodon shark.
“A lot of it is respecting The Meg, and trying to make sure it’s a great Meg film,” Wheatley said in an interview with ComicBook.com. “And as you can see from the movies I’ve made, they’re not necessarily, it’s not … when you go and do Doctor Who, I don’t completely change it because I wanted to do it. I didn’t want to necessarily make it something completely different that nobody recognized, you know? So there’s that element of back and forth.”
He continued, “But it’s an opportunity to do action on such an insanely large scale, that it’s just unbelievable. From doing Free Fire, which was, I thought, was all my Christmases came at once in terms of action, this is just unbelievable. And just doing the storyboards for it, just thinking and going, ‘Oh,’ it’s just … I feel a heavy responsibility for it, to make sure that it kind of delivers on all the, to all the big shark fans out there.”
The first movie, which was an adaptation of the novel by Steve Alten, saw Statham portraying Jonas Taylor, a rescue diver who finds himself pitted against a giant prehistoric Megalodon shark. Despite mixed reviews, The Meg was a hit with audiences at the worldwide box office after grossing $530 million. Details on the upcoming sequel are currently being kept under wraps.
