Sequel to giant shark movie The Meg is in the works

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

I like watching shark thrillers and a big screen adaptation of author Steve Alten's 1997 novel Meg is something I wanted to see happen for a long time, but when THE MEG was finally made and released earlier this year I didn't end up going to see it. It just didn't sound like it was the shark movie for me.

A lot of people did go see it, though. Enough that the movie scored almost $530 million at the worldwide box office. When you see that number and then take into account that Alten's Meg was the first in a series of five giant shark novels, it seems obvious that there's going to be a sequel.

There is a sequel now in the works. Appearing at the U.S.-China Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles yesterday, THE MEG executive producer Catherine Xujun Ying confirmed that making THE MEG 2 is 

definitely the plan. It’s still in the very early stages, but we’re working on it. We’re trying to keep it secret at this time."

Ying is CEO of the China-based company Gravity Pictures, which helped Warner Bros. finance THE MEG. The film's producer, Belle Avery, does hold the film rights to all of Alten's Meg books.

In addition to making another MEG movie, or possibly a series of MEG movies, there are also discussions of creating MEG-inspired theme park rides in China.

THE MEG starred Jason Statham, Rainn Wilson, Winston Chao, Li Bingbing, Ruby Rose, Page Kennedy, Jessica McNamee, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Robert Taylor, Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai, and Masi Oka. Jon Turteltaub directed the film, working from a screenplay by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, and Erich Hoeber.

The synopsis: 

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 is recruited by a visionary Chinese oceanographer, against the wishes of his daughter Suyin, 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.

The film will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 13th (pre-order your copy HERE), so I'll be catching up with it then.