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Metro
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
All 4 films in horror series hailed 'a cinematic masterpiece' coming to Netflix
Fifty years after first terrifying cinema audiences, Jaws is coming to Netflix along with its three sequels. Released in 1975, the iconic shark film sees an enormous Great White rack up a body count in the ocean surrounding Amity Island. Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) teams up with marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and local fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) in a bid to take down the creature. Jaws' impact is almost beyond the realms of comprehension, going down in history as one of the most influential releases in motion picture history. It was the highest-grossing film ever made until the release of Star Wars two years later, and has inspired every sharksploitation film that followed. Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. Jaws 2 was released in 1978 with Schneider reprising his role as Sheriff Brody alongside Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton as Ellen Brody and Mayor Larry Vaughn, respectively. Now police chief, Brody suspects another shark is terrorising Amity Island after a series of disappearances and bloody incidents. In 1983 a third sequel, Jaws 3-D, hit the big screen starring Dennis Quaid as Michael Brody, the son of Martin. The Brody children from the previous films are all grown up and taking a trip to SeaWorld, where a young shark infiltrates the park from the sea and begins attacking and killing the park's employees. A final sequel (so far) was released in 1987, Jaws: The Revenge, starring Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody, who came out of retirement for the film. It acts as a direct sequel to Jaws 2 – ignoring the events of Jaws 3-D entirely – where a now-widowed Ellen Brody believes a shark is seeking revenge on her family. The original film holds an impressive 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, being dubbed a 'cinematic masterpiece' and 'truly great.' The critics' consensus reads: 'Compelling, well-crafted storytelling and a judicious sense of terror ensure Steven Spielberg's Jaws has remained a benchmark in the art of delivering modern blockbuster thrills.' Its sequels have not fared as well, however, with Jaws 2 sitting at 56%, Jaws 3-D at 10%, and Jaws: The Revenge at just 2%. Speaking earlier this year, Jaws director Steven Spielberg revealed how he thought he was having a heart attack due to a panic attack he experienced while filming. More Trending Detailing his experience on set in a new National Geographic special to celebrate the milestone anniversary, titled Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, the filmmaker shared that he battled nightmares for 'years' afterwards. 'When the film wrapped in Martha's Vineyard, I had a full-blown panic attack,' he told the cameras. 'I couldn't breathe, I thought I was having a heart attack. I couldn't get a full breath of air. 'I kept going to the bathroom and splashing water on my face. I was shaking. And I was out of it – I was completely out of it.' Jaws, Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D, and Jaws: The Revenge will be available to stream on Netflix from July 15 Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Dark period drama that 'instantly hooked' viewers is now streaming on Netflix MORE: 2023's biggest and most explosive blockbuster is streaming this weekend MORE: 'Enthralling' supernatural horror series perfect for Stranger Things fans days from launching
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
I Can't Watch "Jaws" The Same Way After Reading These 13 Behind-The-Scenes Facts
Steven Spielberg got hold of an advanced copy of the 1974 novel Jaws by Peter Benchley before it was published and knew right away that he wanted to shoot it for the screen. But there was a problem. A pair of producers already owned the film rights and had a different director in mind. Then, one day, Spielberg got a call that Benchley wanted to meet with him. In an interview from the book Spielberg: The First Ten Years, the director explained, "They sat me down and announced, 'We want you to direct Jaws.' I said, 'Whatever happened to the director?' And they explained, 'We had the meeting with him, but he kept referring to the shark in front of Peter Benchley as "the white whale." And Peter became very disinterested in having his shark called a whale.' And that's how the project finally came to me." film version of Jaws cut out several subplots from the novel, including one where Ellen Brody has an affair with Matt Hooper. In the book, Ellen dated Matt's older brother when they were younger and, when they met again as adults, succumbed to the rugged marine biologist's charms. Martin Brody finds out about their liaison, but instead of wrapping up the plot with a confrontation or closure, he just stews in his bitterness, leading to a much less happy ending. The book also features a subplot about Mayor Larry Vaughn being under the mafia's thumb, as if his character could be any sleazier. Both subplots were cut because they took focus away from the real heart of the movie, the hunt for the deadly shark. author Peter Benchley appears briefly in the movie as a TV news reporter giving updates from the beach. Benchley had previously worked as an actual TV news reporter, so the role was a natural fit. After Jaws, Benchley became a shark expert and conservationist. He said, "Knowing what I know today, I couldn't write the same book. ... I couldn't possibly demonize an animal the way I did." Dreyfuss, who played Matt Hooper, wasn't Spielberg's first choice for the part. The director first went to Jon Voight, Timothy Bottoms, and Jeff Bridges before George Lucas suggested Dreyfuss, having just worked with him on American Graffiti. Dreyfuss wasn't initially interested in doing the movie, but after meeting with Spielberg a second time, he agreed to join the cast. Before his breakout role in American Graffiti, Dreyfuss had played small parts in various TV shows like Gunsmoke and That Girl. He would go on to work with Spielberg again in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Always. he started shooting Jaws, Spielberg hired the Australian filmmakers Ron and Valerie Taylor to shoot some underwater film with a real great white shark. The Taylors shot footage of a stuntman confronting the shark from within a cage, which was used in the tense scene in the movie where Hooper comes face to jaws with the shark. But despite the Taylors' experience working in the water, it didn't go as planned. The stuntman wasn't a trained diver, so he became overwhelmed with fear at the point of being submerged. During a take when he wasn't in the cage, the shark down below got caught in the wires attached to the cage. In its struggle to break free, the shark severed the wires and the cage sank into the sea. Spielberg had originally intended to have Dreyfuss's character killed by the shark during the cage scene, but he loved the happy accident of the Taylors' footage so much that he rewrote the script to have Hooper escape. Valerie Taylor went on to work as a conservationist and advocate for sharks, and the subject of the National Geographic documentary Playing with Sharks. She believes that sharks have distinct personalities and has said, "Some are shy, some are bullies, some are brave." Vineyard stood in for the town of Amity, but Spielberg chose the location for more than its quaint New England charm. To capture shots of the shark hunters out on the open ocean, Spielberg needed a location with shallow enough water to install and run the mechanical shark. He said, "It was the only place on the East Coast where I could go twelve miles out to sea and avoid any sighting of land but still have a sandy ocean bottom only thirty feet below the surface, where we could install our shark sled." Spielberg felt that shooting on the water without any land visible made these scenes more suspenseful. "I wanted the audience to think the boat couldn't just simply turn around and go back to shore. I literally needed a 360-degree stage at sea." mechanical sharks were built for the movie and were nicknamed Bruce, after Spielberg's lawyer. They were constructed by special effects wizard Bob Mattey, who also built the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The sharks cost $250,000 to build and were even more expensive to use in the water. Working with Bruce in the open ocean turned out to be a filmmaker's nightmare. The water rusted its machinery, and it frequently malfunctioned or refused to work at all. The movie had been scheduled to shoot in 55 days, but the trouble with Bruce and the unpredictable nature of shooting in the ocean inflated the shoot to 159 days. Ultimately, Spielberg ended up finding creative ways to shoot around Bruce's limitations. The movie also shows the shark sparingly, with its first appearance coming an hour and 21 minutes into the film. designer Joe Alves worried that Bruce wouldn't be frightening enough for audiences. "I thought people would laugh at the shark because it would make all of these funny noises before the music was added and the crew would laugh." He went on to say, "But when I saw the first screening, nobody laughed. They started screaming. Then I realized, 'Oh, I think we've got a big success here.'" John Williams wrote the iconic "Jaws Theme" on the piano, using low, rhythmic notes to build a primal sense of dread. But when Spielberg first heard the composition, he thought it was "too simple." Williams would later recall that when he first played it for the director, Spielberg said, "You can't be serious." "At that time, I had no idea that it would have that kind of impact on people," Williams said. "Steven and I had a little laugh about it." Williams's score for Jaws won his second Academy Award. He has scored 26 films for Spielberg, including the Indiana Jones trilogy, E.T., and Jurassic Park. grizzled seaman Quint's mannerisms and lines were partly inspired by a Martha's Vineyard selectman named Craig Kingsbury, who showed up to an open audition. Spielberg ended up casting Kingsbury as Ben Gardner after nearly choosing him for the role of Quint, which went to Robert Shaw. Kingsbury ad-libbed lines like, "They'll wish their fathers had never met their mothers, when they start takin' their bottoms out and slammin' into them rocks, boy." Spielberg loved the local color Kingsbury brought to the movie so much that he kept making his part bigger. 11.A scene was cut from Jaws because of actor Gregory Peck. Originally, the movie introduced Quint disrupting a screening of Moby Dick in an Amity cinema. However, Peck owned the rights to the 1956 movie and didn't allow it to be shown in Jaws. Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss didn't get along on set. Shaw thought Dreyfuss was arrogant and inexperienced, and in turn, Dreyfuss was frustrated with the older actor's habit of drinking to excess. One day, Shaw reportedly asked Dreyfuss to help him out, and Dreyfuss responded by grabbing and throwing his costar's glass of bourbon out the window. Later that day, Dreyfuss said that Shaw sprayed him with a fire extinguisher mid-take. In later years, Dreyfuss would speak fondly of his costar, saying, "In private, he was the kindest, gentlest, funniest guy you ever met." the line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," is probably the most famous bit of dialogue in Jaws, and it was ad-libbed by actor Roy Scheider. The line came from an inside joke among the crew who were often frustrated by the difficulties of loading all the equipment and amenities of a working film set onto a boat. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb explained, "It became a catchphrase for any time anything went wrong—if lunch was late or the swells were rocking the camera, someone would say, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.'" Scheider had a habit of slipping the line into his scenes, and the moment when he deadpans it after the movie's first shark sighting was just too good to cut.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Jaws 'Actress Lorraine Gary Admits She Had a 'Mad Crush' on Costar Robert Shaw (Exclusive)
Lorraine Gary played Ellen Brody in the 1975 thriller Jaws In a new interview with PEOPLE for the film's 50th anniversary, the actress admits she had a "mad crush" on costar Robert Shaw Gary also remembers director Steven Spielberg having nerves while helming his first big filmEllen Brody may have been married to the police chief in Jaws, but in real life, she was much more interested in Quint. "I had a mad crush on Robert Shaw," Lorraine Gary, who played Ellen, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. Shaw portrayed Quint, the hardened hunter tasked with taking down the shark terrorizing Amity Island in the 1975 thriller. "Now for me, he was more than a gorgeous actor," she continues. "He was a playwright, he was an intellectual, he was a lovely, lovely human being. And yes, that was thrilling." Shaw died in 1978 at the age of 51 of a heart attack, three years after the release of Jaws. "We only had three days together in the Vineyard, and that's when I began to know him," Gary recalls, referencing Matha's Vineyard, where the film was primarily shot. "But when we came back to California and the film was still shooting at Universal, we had dinner first at a restaurant with Robert." "My son Billy opened the door and let him in, and Robert said, 'Hello, poxy!' In other words, 'You've got chicken pox.' And [Billy] at the point had no fever, no spots, nothing. But having had so many kids, he recognized the symptoms of someone who was coming down with it." She adds, "He had, like, 12 children!" Gary, 88, retired from acting in 1979 after starring in Steven Spielberg's 1941. She reprised her role as Ellen once more for the final Jaws movie in 1987, Jaws: The Revenge. Jaws was the first Spielberg movie Gary starred in. Her husband, Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal at the time, is credited with discovering the fledgling director. Gary recalls her husband first told her Universal was producing Jaws, and her agent put her up for the role with no audition. "Steven knew my work, and he liked my work and that was it," she says. Jaws was famously shot on-location in the Atlantic Ocean and went 100 days over schedule, causing Spielberg to think his career as a filmmaker was "over." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. "Steven's a very human guy, and of course he was nervous," Gary says. "I'm sure he was scared that he'd be pulled from this first big movie, but he was confident in his own work. What he wasn't confident in was the building of the shark, until it finally worked several times after failing and working on the ocean, which was an enormous risk and caused a lot of the delay." The mechanical shark frequently malfunctioned in the water, delaying the production process. But Gary adds that her husband was confident the risk would pay off. "It was Sid that decided to spend the extra money to bet on Steven's talent. He knew this was going to be a very big movie, and it was Sid's idea to open huge in 400 theaters, which was generally not done," she shares. "And he's the man you can blame for the summer blockbusters! I blame him for that too. I don't like most of those other movies, but I did like Jaws." For more on Jaws, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday. Read the original article on People
USA Today
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
'Jaws' returning to theaters for 50th anniversary: See when
'Jaws' returning to theaters for 50th anniversary: See when Show Caption Hide Caption Athlete marks 'Jaws' 50th anniversary with 60-mile swim Swimmer Lewis Pugh circumnavigated Martha's Vineyard to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie "Jaws" and draw attention to the plight of sharks. The horror movie "Jaws," which took American beachgoers by storm in the mid-1970s, turns 50 this summer. The legendary Steven Spielberg-directed shark film, famous for its terrifying two-note John Williams musical intro (dun-dunn... dun-dunn), first hit theaters on June 20, 1975. In the film, a massive great white shark hunts people swimming in the water surrounding the fictitious Amity Island. To celebrate "Jaws" turning the big 5-0, the blockbuster is returning to movie theaters this summer. When does "Jaws" return to theaters? Here's what to know about the 50th anniversary of the horror film returning to the big screen. When does 'Jaws' return to theaters? A big screen rerelease of "Jaws" is set for Aug. 29. Who stars in 'Jaws'? The stars featured in "Jaws" include: Roy Scheider as Amity police Chief Martin Brody as Amity police Chief Martin Brody Lorraine Gary as the chief's wife, Ellen Brody as the chief's wife, Ellen Brody Richard Dreyfuss as marine biologist Matt Hooper as marine biologist Matt Hooper Robert Shaw as shark hunter Quint In addition, beginning on June 15, "Jaws" and its three sequels, "Jaws 2," "Jaws 3" and "Jaws: The Revenge" will be available on Peacock. Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@ and follow her on X @nataliealund.
