Variety reported this week that the long dormant giant, prehistoric shark epic Meg is again (supposedly) inching towards the silver screen. Adapted from the first, and least awful, of author Steve Alten’s series about the return of the prehistoric, 80-foot sharks to the modern world, the film adaptation has appeared severally sharkbit over the years.
The project first reared its snout back when TriStar was making Godzilla. This was expected to be a huge success, and no doubt kick off a market for giant monster movies. Sadly, TriStar screwed the saurus by hiring a directing/producing team who felt superior to the project’s “cheese factor,” and felt comfortable saying so in public on many occasions. Since these were the guys who had made Independence Day, their arrogance was a trifle gagging, and sure enough their ‘reimagining’ fell considerably short of, say, the modern TV redo of Battlestar Galatica. In sum, their movie a) sucked, and b) was in no recognizable way a ‘Godzilla’ movie. When Godzilla underperformed, Meg was shelved. The next round of interest in the project arose when Universal was making King Kong, which was expected to be a huge success, and no doubt kick off a market for giant monster movies. (Hmm, sounds familiar…) King Kong was quite good, but not great, and certainly far superior to the TriStar Godzilla. However, it too underperformed.
At this point, Meg was shelved again, purportedly because the budget, which the studio wished to be in the $75 million ballpark, seemed likely to balloon to a rather more robust $150 million. Had King Kong made a gigantic fortune, they might not have worried about this quite so much. It didn’t, though, and (I must say probably wisely), the studio backed off again until they thought the film could be brought in for the original figure.
Ironically, the director attached to Meg is Jan de Bont. De Bont was once seriously in the running for the TriStar Godzilla gig, and supposedly intended to make a much more orthodox Godzilla movie. However, as with Meg, the film he envisioned would have again ballooned the studio’s favored budget, and so they made a (in that case) pound wise and penny foolish direction and hired the aforementioned Godzilla philistines.
This doesn’t mean that de Bont would have been a slam dunk to have made a significantly better Godzilla movie, although given what we got, he certainly would have had a fair shot at it. de Bont had hit the ground running with the successful Keanu Reeves action thriller Speed, and the even bigger hit Twister. At that point, he seemed destined for a successful career, if not much in the way of critical accolades.
After that, however, the director’s stock fell quickly, as he helmed a series of turkeys including (ominously) the shot-on-water sequel Speed 2: Cruise Control. Genre fans were further pissed off by his atrocious adaption of the revered haunted house classic The Haunting (1999). Since then, he was directed one movie, Lara Croft: The Cradle of Life (2003).
At this point, rougly four years since he made his last film, de Bont has not made another movie. He does have two in the hopper, Meg and an action piece entitled Stopping Power, although who knows whether either of those will actually be made. Neither project, for instance, has an attached cast yet.
Actually, the making of Meg could be helped along if one of this year’s two low-budget killer crocodile movies does well. However, Primeval seems to be being dumped on the market, and the advertising campaign doesn’t even mention that it involves a killer crocodile. (!) Better hopes are had for the upcoming Rogue, by the makers of Wolf Creek, but chances are that that film too will only do moderate business.In any case, giant monster fans can only hope that the film gets made, that it doesn’t suck, and that it makes money. Or at least two out three of those.
