Jurassic Park Meets Jaws In This $927.5M Sci-Fi Franchise That Needs Another Sequel

2 hours ago 14

Published Sep 1, 2026, 9:01 AM EDT

Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 15 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic.

When movie studios chase giant, broad-audience blockbusters, the formulas have become increasingly safe and increasingly repetitive. Summer blockbuster season is dominated by adaptations of major IPs, remakes, reboots, and franchise sequels, where creative top tables recognize the potential for established audiences. But sometimes, a bit of original magic sneaks through and manages to make hundreds of millions.

Almost a decade ago, Warner Bros handed Jason Statham a jet ski and an ocean of CGI, and unexpectedly engineered a $927.5 million success story. The premise was actually quite simple: take the defining elements of two of Steven Spielberg’s biggest hits - Jurassic Park and Jaws - and dial up the absurdity factor to create a monster movie that plays on one of the most enduring and universal human fear: what lies beneath.

Thus, The Meg was born, and against all odds, the giant killer shark movie struck box office gold. Why wouldn’t it? Jon Turteltaub’s shark feature was marketed on the simple premise of taking Jaws and injecting a serious amount of steroids, and pulling at the nightmare thread that drives all monster mythology - what if there’s something hiding in the uncharted deeps that would rewrite the entire power hierarchy of the ocean? Luckily, though, the world had a grumpy loner with traumatic baggage played by Jason Statham to hold the line. Twice. And frankly, he should be allowed to do it again.

The Meg Is One Of Jason Statham's Wildest Franchises

Jason Statham holding a megalodon's jaws open with his leg in Meg 2 The Trench

Considering Jason Statham's franchise card includes several Fast & Furious movies and two Crank movies, the fact that The Meg and its sequel rank as the wildest things he's made says a lot about the movies. If anything, the original played things a little too straight, with contemporary reviews lamenting the restraint and wishing, if anything, that it was a little cheesier. This, remember, is a movie about two giant prehistoric Megalodons that escape captivity from the Mariana Trench, a giant squid, a scientist unironically named "The Wall", and a climactic battle in which Statham basically single-handedly beats up a 60-foot-plus shark.

The first movie leans more into the spirit of the original Jurassic Park, with slightly uneven results. It wants the monstrous action to be taken seriously, and for the sharks to have the same sort of aura as the T.Rex and Jaws' leading fish, and does well with establishing that mythology, but it holds back a little too much. Because, at its heart, the Meg franchise channels both the pure adrenaline-spiking nightmare fuel of Jurassic Park and the one-man-army, Die Hard-like spirit that runs as such a rich seam through Statham's resumé. And escalation adds to the fun.

By the time the sequel came about, all pretense of seriousness was thrown out. The budget came in leaner, and the critical response was more negative, but the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes being a full 45% higher is the real thing to take note of. The Meg 2: The Trench added more of the most fun elements of the original: more cartoonish human villains, more opportunities for Jason Statham to smolder, more sharks, and even more prehistoric creatures from the deep. It wasn't quite gonzo, but there's way more of a big money B-movie feel to it and a sense that it's in on the joke. And it still retained the same creature feature peril of Spielberg's classics.

Why Meg 3 Should Happen & What We Know About It

Jason Statham holding a blue board as Jonas Taylor in Meg 2 The Trench

Despite the success of the first two movies, The Meg 3 isn't yet confirmed. The budgets may have been quite hefty (even if the second was lower), and The Trench made less than the first (just under $400m rather than $530m), but that's still good money, and the trajectory of the franchise makes the lack of progress frustrating. Looking at the jump in absurd entertainment between the first and second movies, just imagine what a third could deliver - and the late reveal that sort-of pet Megalodon Haiqi could be pregnant sets up the heart of the storyline well.

Sadly, back in March, the possibility of The Meg 3 happening took a hit when the sequel's director Ben Wheatley told The Direct that he was unsure of it being made: "I'm sure the Meg itself, it's out there swimming. There's a massive, dark shadow in the sea. But I don't know what's going on [with a third movie]." And just to salt the wound further, Wheatley also revealed his own idea of what he'd want to see in a threequel, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the madness audiences could only hope for: "what I want to do is have The Meg being researched for military purposes, and it gets up on land, with legs."

Is that ludicrous? Of course it is. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a lot of fun. Whether Warner Bros. would sanction something that silly remains to be seen, but you can still make The Meg 3 in the same zanier spirit of the sequel without fully jumping the (walking) shark. And it's high time they did so.