Eli Roth Talks Meg!

Based off the book series by Steve Alten, Meg has been sitting in development hell since the late 90’s.   The books follow Jonas Taylor, an ex-Navy diver who discovers the ancestor of the great white shark, the Megalodon, who was thought to be extinct for thousands if not millions of years, is still alive and thriving in the ocean.  Many directors tried to get the movie going including Jan De Bont and it should be no surprise that this movie is on Guillermo del Toro’s list of failed movie projects.

Thanks to the overwhelming success of Jurassic World, the film was fast tracked into production and horror director Eli Roth was hired to bring the dinosaur shark to life.  Eli talked about finishing the script and his decision to make the shark CG instead of using practical effects.

“We just turned in the script to the studio and I’m designing the artwork now. I’m doing some character and creature designs. It’s so much fun. I cannot wait.  The thing is with Meg, the size of the creature, it sort of becomes impractical to do it practically, but I’ve seen how they’ve done the whale in In the Heart of the Sea. They showed me footage and they’re like, ‘Before you judge CG, take a look at this,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ The whale in In the Heart of the Sea looks so good. I was like, ‘All right, we’re good.’ I wouldn’t do the movie unless I believed the technology was there to do it and the great thing is with Warner Bros and the team that we’re doing [it] with, we’re gonna have the resources to do it right.”

The size of the shark does help lean the decision to utilize CGI more then practical effects because the shark is supposed to be the T-Rex of the ocean, in fact, in the beginning of the book a megalodon eats a T-Rex that has traveled too far off the coast.

I have been waiting for this movie for years.  I’ve read the first four books and they read like summer blockbuster movies, they are fun, violent, scary, and if WB actually puts the work in we could have another Jurassic World/Jaws on our hands.