You will never want to go in the water again. However, that said, you might be glad you did when you once again bask in the ridiculous sight of action movie superstar Jason Statham taking on a giant shark in the first trailer for Meg 2: The Trench. Published courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, Meg 2: The Trench promises to bring even bigger monster mash to theaters when it launches later this year. Check out the new trailer for Meg 2: The Trench below.
Released in 2018, The mega follows The Stath and a group of scientists who encounter a 75-foot-long megalodon shark while on a rescue mission at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Entering the world of men and treating it like an all-you-can-eat buffet, The mega received mixed reviews, although many enjoyed the throwback to the B-movie creature feature. Despite the critical response, The mega was a huge box office hit, grossing a worldwide total of $530.2 million. Of course, with such financial success comes the inevitable follow-up…
So, Meg 2: The Trench will reunite audiences with Jason Statham as gruff rescue diver Jonas Taylor, who once again finds himself playing the hero when the Megalodon returns. Directed by Ben Wheatley and written by Dean Georgaris, and Jon and Erich Hoeber, and based on the 1999 book The Trench by Steve Alten, Meg 2: The Trench stars Sienna Guillory, Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Skyler Samuels, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, and Wu Jing alongside Statham.
Director Ben Wheatley is determined to get in on the action in Meg 2: The Trench
Meg 2: The Trench director Ben Wheatley, who is best known for the likes of psychological horror release kill list and the dark comedy action movie Free fireis determined to bring large-scale action to the big screen with the sequel.
“It’s an opportunity to act on such a grand scale, it’s just amazing,” the filmmaker teased. “To do Free Fire, which was, I thought, all my Christmases came at once in terms of the action, it’s just amazing. And just doing the storyboards for that, just thinking and saying, ‘Oh,’ it’s just… I feel a heavy responsibility for this, to make sure it caters to all the, all the big shark fans out there.”
While one of The Meg’s biggest criticisms was its obvious lack of gore and gore (surely necessary elements in a giant shark movie), Wheatley said it would honor the tone of the first outing. “A lot of it is about respecting The Meg and trying to make sure it’s a great Meg movie,” he explained. “And as you can see in the movies that I’ve done, 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 don’t didn’t necessarily want to make it something completely different that nobody would recognize, you know? So there’s this element of back and forth.”
Meg 2: The Trench is scheduled to be published by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States on August 4, 2023.