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Yahoo
4 days ago
- 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.
Buzz Feed
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
13 Facts That Will Forever Change How You See 'Jaws'
Director 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." The 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. Jaws 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." Richard 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. Before 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." Martha's 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." Three 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. Production 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.'" Composer 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. The 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. 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. Robert 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." Finally, 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.
Japan Times
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
Fifty years after 'Jaws,' the water's not safe ... for sharks
Fifty years on from the release of "Jaws," it's still not safe in the water ... if you're a shark. Steven Spielberg's legendary movie about a man-eating great white shark is a masterpiece. The iconic score, the camera work, the dramatic tension that comes from withholding the villain and a great script all make it a Hollywood classic. But its success disturbed both Spielberg and Peter Benchley, the author of the book the film is based on. The tale helped galvanize a fear of the ocean predators and potentially contributed to a huge backlash. An article published in the New York Times in October 1975 reports that the film spurred an interest in shark fishing tournaments. While some were terrified of swimming after watching the movie, there were plenty of fishermen keen to prove their bravery by catching a shark. In 2014, Christopher Pepin-Neff, an associate professor in public policy at the University of Sydney, coined the term "the 'Jaws' Effect,' arguing that because the public believed the fictional story of a vengeful shark so completely, it justified anti-shark policies while taking conservation off the table. In 2022, Spielberg told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs that he feared sharks were "mad' at him for "the feeding frenzy' of fishing that happened after 1975.' Benchley dedicated his post-"Jaws" career to advocating for shark conservation and, after his death, his widow Wendy Benchley co-founded the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards. Still, Spielberg and Benchley aren't the only culprits for what's happened in the oceans during the last half-century. Sharks are in hot water, literally. A 2024 status report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that a third of sharks, rays and chimaeras are at risk of extinction. A 2021 study published in Nature found that the global abundance of sharks and rays in the ocean has declined by 71% since 1970. The problem lies in our demand for seafood. There's a perception that China's taste for shark fin soup was the main threat to these fish, but Rachel Graham, founder of nonprofit marine conservation organization MarAlliance, told me that's wrong: "So long as you have large scale fisheries, you're going to catch sharks.' These predatory fish, such as hammerheads and silky sharks, often end up as bycatch — tangled in nets or ensnared on long lines intended to catch other species. Couple that with humanity's growing taste for shark meat — now a multibillion dollar industry — and you've got a group of species that barely stands a chance against both accidental and targeted fishing. Plastic pollution and climate change are also emerging as existential threats. Part of the reason sharks are so vulnerable to overfishing is their slow life cycles. A great white shark like the star of "Jaws," for instance, reaches sexual maturity at age 26 if he's male and 33 if she's female. The Greenland shark is only ready to mate at a whopping 150 years old. Pregnancies are also long, averaging between nine and 12 months, and result in far fewer offspring than bony fish who release millions of eggs. That means populations can take years, potentially decades, to bounce back. However, there is a glimmer of hope in Belize, where Graham has worked for almost 30 years. The nation has set up 15 marine protected areas and completely banned the use of fishing nets while collaboration between the local fishing industry, marine scientists and management authorities have helped to transform attitudes towards sharks in the Caribbean nation. The results are stark: In the 11 years since Turneffe Atoll became a managed protected area, there's been a tenfold increase in sharks. It's a reassuring sign that, if you give nature a break, threatened species can bounce back. The work has also helped undo entrenched fear and hatred of the species. Rather than seeing sharks as a threat, Belizians now see them as an important part of their heritage and an economic opportunity now that shark-focused tourism is on the rise. MarAlliance has also employed and trained fishers to collect data on the fish — providing an alternative income source that isn't dependent on natural resources and teaching them how to fish sustainably. Graham is now working on setting up a "shark superhighway' between Belize and Mexico — which will help protect species such as whale sharks, reef sharks and sea turtles. You may wonder why, exactly, we want more jaws in the ocean. Well, picture a city with no trash collection and no police force. A similar sort of chaos would happen if we removed sharks from their ecosystems, Graham explained to me. They're responsible for keeping prey numbers in check, removing the weak and sick and maintaining balance to ensure species diversity. We can also thank sharks for maintaining seagrass and coral reefs. That said, as shark populations rebound — something I hope can be replicated around the world — and climate change alters prey availability and distribution, we'll probably have to get used to being around sharks more often. The IUCN report notes that, although shark bites remain rare and unlikely events, their frequency has increased since the 1980s. Most result in minor injuries — only seven people were killed in attacks last year, three of which were provoked by the swimmers — but every headline brings back that image of Jaws dragging his victims down to a watery, bloody death. Graham has some pointers to help us enjoy the ocean alongside our shark friends: Don't swim at dawn or dusk when these predators are likely to be hunting and may not be able to distinguish you from their food. Don't swim in murky water or where people are fishing. Stick with a buddy, don't wear anything shiny — and if you do spy a shark, give it space and exit the water calmly. Graham describes a moment diving in the Red Sea in 1990, surrounded by more than 50 grey reef sharks: "I never felt any alarm, I just felt serenity.' Half a century after "Jaws" convinced us that they're evil villains, sharks are the only apex predators in the world that you can be two feet away from quite safely. They deserve a break. Lara Williams is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change.
Gizmodo
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The Director of ‘Jaws @ 50' Explains Why It's the Ultimate Chronicle of the Classic
Jaws officially turned 50 last week, and it's easy to imagine that Steven Spielberg's shark thriller—Hollywood's first summer blockbuster—will be considered just as much of a classic in 50 more years. National Geographic's annual 'Sharkfest' programming marks the milestone with Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, a new documentary from frequent Spielberg collaborator Laurent Bouzereau (Music by John Williams). As fans of cinema history well know, however, Jaws is already a well-documented film. In addition to the array of previous behind-the-scenes films, if you haven't read The Jaws Log, by Jaws actor and co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb—with an introduction by Jaws novel author Peter Benchley—it's a must for learning all the gory details about the film's notoriously troubled production. And Spielberg is aware that the making of his 1975 film has become the stuff of legend; early in Jaws @ 50, Bouzereau asks him if there's anything he hasn't already said about Jaws before, and the Oscar winner responds 'Let's find out.' As part of a recent press day ahead of Jaws @ 50 hitting National Geographic, Hulu, and Disney+, we asked Bouzereau what sets this new documentary apart from all the material that's come before. 'I think that so far, the story of Jaws has been told through very mechanical things, the mechanical shark mainly, and technical things,' he said. 'This is really the heart and soul of a creator in Steven Spielberg, telling the stories of what this really meant to him as an artist. And I think that emotional drama—that's a viable story, something that's been taken for granted and has been mentioned but never discussed. To me, [that] was the heart of telling the story.' In addition, he said, 'Jaws is a generational experience. I really wanted to include new filmmakers [as well as] new voices from the world of the ocean and shark conservation to really discuss the impact that storytelling can have on the world … I think those things, again, have been mentioned but never discussed in a way that is dramatic and suspenseful. We feel that this is a fresh new way of talking about the impact of Jaws.' Bouzereau actually made a making-of doc on the occasion of Jaws' 30th anniversary, included on the film's laserdisc release at the time. He's glad he made it, in part because 'a lot of people from the film were still around [at the time but are no longer with us now]. So I was in a privileged position to sort of talk to those people for the first time in depth since they had made the film. That's a very different kind—more like an [eyewitness], historical kind of approach. So this is a different story. This is a perspective at 50.' Thanks to his earlier work surrounding the film, he was able to pull from earlier interviews he'd done with Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss, who's notably absent from the slate of new interviews. 'He is in [Jaws @ 50] through these archival interviews that I made with him. And unfortunately, I was on a really tight, tight schedule,' Bouzerau explained. 'I was reassured by the fact that I had this amazing interview [with him] that had not really been seen or used at length. So I think he's a very strong voice in it, and I was very happy that I could at least acknowledge his incredible legacy with Jaws. But yeah, [the reason there's not a new interview with him] was a question of timing.' The new film's talking heads include Spielberg, of course, as well as some celebrity superfans, including noted deep-water junkie James Cameron as well as Jordan Peele, who memorably foregrounded a Jaws t-shirt in his movie Us. 'I cast this very carefully because each of them had a different sort of take away from the Jaws experience and watching it. But I can give you the example of [how] Steven Soderbergh came into it,' Bouzereau said, relating an anecdote. During filming on the documentary, Soderbergh texted Spielberg wish him a happy anniversary—because it happened to be the 50th anniversary of the very first day of filming on Jaws. 'The man has studied the call sheets, the schedule of Jaws because this is a director who makes movies very fast and on budget,' Bouzereau said of Soderbergh. 'And that's the opposite of what happened on Jaws. So he's obsessed with that angle.' As for Guillermo del Toro, '[He's] someone who's made a career out of talking about monsters: the monsters inside, the monsters outside. And therefore I was curious about his relationship with the Jaws monster because Jaws is a metaphor. It's a metaphor for his fears. So I was curious about that. So all of this fed my storytelling and was very carefully orchestrated.' Another key talking head? Wendy Benchley, the wife of late Jaws author Peter Benchley. After the book became a movie and a global phenomenon, the couple became advocates for ocean conservation and a better understanding of sharks. In Jaws @ 50, Wendy Benchely recounts the first time she saw the film, and io9 asked her more about what that was like. She watched the film with Peter and 'shark experts and people who were cinematographers who actually had been in the water with sharks,' she recalled, including Ron and Valerie Taylor, Stan Waterman, and Peter Gimble, who all worked on Blue Water, White Death—the 1969 documentary that helped plant the narrative seeds for Jaws. 'We were very nervous because we wanted them to be happy with the film,' she recalled. 'And they were, I mean, they thought the film was really superb. You know, they understood that this was a film that created a 25-foot shark that really didn't exist … but that was a big relief to Peter and me, that are our shark friends and our people that we depended upon really thought it was excellent.' After that, she and Peter attended a public screening with Dreyfuss. 'We couldn't believe it because the audience was up and cheering. And we knew that it was really a thrilling movie. And Richard, of course, who had gone through four or five months with everybody else of agony trying to get this film made, was so thrilled,' she remembered. 'He was jumping up and down on the sidewalk and just screaming at the top of his lungs. 'We did it! We did it!' So that was exciting.' Benchley is pleased that Jaws @ 50 is airing as part of Sharkfest, and that its focus includes shark experts as well as Hollywood types. 'That to me is why this documentary is so marvelous, because it tells the full story of Jaws, of the book and the movie, and the fact that Jaws had a positive effect,' she said. 'It really jumpstarted science and interest in sharks. And that has carried on over the 50 years. I always mention this statistic because I think it's important for people to realize that it happened right away after Jaws. At the Rosenstiel School [of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami], the increase [in applications] was 30% in marine science right after Jaws. So it didn't take 20 years. It happened right away.' Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story premieres July 10 on National Geographic and streams the next day on Disney+ and Hulu. It's also included on the Jaws 50th Anniversary Edition available now on 4K, Blu-ray, and digital from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Geek Tyrant
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Original Unreleased JAWS Movie Poster Art — GeekTyrant
Before Steven Spielberg's Jaws changed blockbuster history and sent millions running from the ocean, the studio was already toying with how to sell the terror. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jaws , I came accross this rarely seen original poster concept, while at WonderCon earlier this year. It reveals a very different approach to the film's marketin, with a tagline that reads 'One man against a giant killer shark and a town that won't face the truth.' It's an early pitch that leaned closer to Peter Benchley's novel than the ensemble-driven thriller we know today. Notably, none of the now-iconic leads are listed, and Benchley is the only credited screenwriter, which is a strong hint that this poster was likely whipped up during pre-production. This alternate poster for Jaws feels raw, almost like a grindhouse thriller. While this poster was never released, it offers a fascinating glimpse into how drastically a film's tone can shift from conception to completion.
