Is now the perfect time for a Jaws legacy sequel?

Jaws, it gave birth to the summer blockbuster, but the great white shark series has been missing from cinema screens since Jaws the Revenge failed to tread water at the box office in 1987.

Jaws 3D (1983), Jaws 2 (1978) and the original Jaws (1975) all made money for Universal, and the series and title has continued to be one of the jewels in the crown of the film studio, especially when it comes to merchandise and instant recognition.

So, with the success of Top Gun: Maverick some 36 years after the original Top Gun, a direct sequel to Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbuster 2 (1989) with Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and the return of the Scream franchise and Halloween, now could be the perfect time for the return of the shark from Jaws and some of the cast of the original series.

All those afore-mentioned films have one thing in common, and that is that they are classed as legacy sequels, in that they carry on over old characters from previous entries in the franchise, whilst introducing new cast to carry the torch.

And the Steven Spielberg executive produced Jurassic World: Dominion is no exception, as that fuses the ‘old world’ of the original Jurassic Park films (Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum) with that of the Jurassic World series of films.

Superhero films have already flown that route, or swung it would be perhaps more apt, with various villains and different Spider-Man actors web-slinging their way to a hit in Spider-Man: No Way Home. DC is also following suit – Bat suit that is – with Michael Keaton returning to the role of the caped crusader in The Flash.

It was a subject that Pamela McClintock recently covered in The Hollywood Reporter, where she had a quote from Universal marketing chief Michael Moses. He said: “It’s obvious that if you can combine the nostalgia and the new, you stand a chance of growing your audience.”

Moses was talking about Jurassic World: Dominion ahead of its opening, but what he said could easily be attributed to any new future Jaws film. It’s perhaps all the more significant as Universal are of course the people behind Jaws.

A new Jaws doesn’t even have to be a direct continuation if you want, which is exactly the route the filmmakers behind Halloween (2018) went, ignoring each and every film in the Michael Myer series apart from the original John Carpenter-directed classic from 1978. It was released by Universal and Blumhouse.

Even though the Carpenter produced Halloween II (1981) took place the same night, that too has been eradicated, and which it any notion that Laurie Strode was the sister of Michael Myers. The same team are about to roll that same reboot dice on another horror classic The Exorcist, where they will be ignoring everything after the original William Friedkin 1973 classic. That means the bonkers sequel, the effective The Exorcist III (1990) and a pair of prequels have been sent back to Hollywood hell.

Even JJ Abrahams did it with Star Trek (2009), able to tell different tales of the Starship Enterprise as its crew were flying down a different timeline to the original series crew, this one was the Kelvin timeline.

So, if it works for all these films, then why not Jaws? Whether it is a sequel that continues after the events of Jaws the Revenge (where Sean Brody and Martin Brody are dead) or takes it back to after the events of Jaws 2 (for many the most liked and accepted of the sequels) or plays the Halloween and the forthcoming The Exorcist card and dials it back to after the events of the original Jaws.

I don’t mean to continue it after Hooper and Brody hit the beach, it has almost been 50 years since Jaws first hit screens, so it will look like Richard Dreyfuss will have pruned a bit since filming, and sadly Roy Scheider is no longer with us – even if he has recently been brought back through the magic of CGI.

Richard Dreyfuss is the only main original surviving cast member, with Robert Shaw passing away in 1978, so he’s the obvious and likely most welcome choice, even if it was returning to Amity island 50 years after the 50th regatta, returning one last time to pay his respects to Chief Brody, and even to Quint.

And – although she hasn’t appeared in anything since Jaws the Revenge – Lorraine Gary could also make a return as Ellen Brody, even if it was just a short scene between her and Dreyfuss. It would also be great to welcome a now retired Deputy Hendricks back into the fold.

In fact, we even saw a concept trailer as far back as 2018 for Jaws Beneath, which gave us a taste of what a Jaws legacy sequel could look like, featuring clips from other films featuring Richard Dreyfuss, such as the Piranha remake, Paranoia and Coma, to help show us an older returning Matt Hooper.

Perfect? No, but it got lots of people stoked, and made the possibility of another Jaws film feel than much more real.

Or the film could focus on Michael Brody – or his daughter Thea – or even a Brody offspring we have never even met before – helping continue the series. Michael Brody the character may have featured in every film, but he has always been played by a different actor, so even with his return we would still need someone like Dreyfuss to anchor it to the original Steven Spielberg shark classic.

Did Jaws ever need a sequel? Not really, but then neither did The Magnificent Seven or even the likes of The Omen, but that is Hollywood for you. And if the same studio can keep on churning out Fast and the Furious films, then it could do far worse than giving us one last return to Amity Island with some of the original cast.

Time is running out for Jaws to have its own legacy sequel, and if Michael Myers, Ghostface, Maverick, the Ghostbusters and the T-Rex can have a crack and win at the box office, then why not Jaws? However, you look at it, for many the series can’t get any lower than Jaws the Revenge, but it showed us glimpses of what could have been, especially when we saw returning characters on the island where it all began.

And Universal can’t have been blind to the shiver of shark film releases of late, some which have been pretty good stuff, such as The Shallows (2016), and even both 47 Meters Down and 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, and not forgetting the huge box office of The Meg (2018). A sequel to that surfaces in 2023 and has already begun shooting just outside London.  

Tom Cruise has helped Top Gun: Maverick, er, cruise into the stratosphere when it is has come to the sheer excitement on the screen, delivering a film that no one knew they wanted or needed a sequel to over three decades after the original hit. It successfully harked back to the original and yet also delivered something new and focussed on a new group of people.

And that is something the new Halloween (2018), Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Scream (2021) have all done, with great commercial and critical success. So much so that Scream 6 has just begun filming and a Ghostbusters: Afterlife follow-up, tentatively called Ghostbusters: Firehouse.

Now, who is ready for Jaws 5? To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum’s character in the original Jurassic Park (1993), which was directed by Steven Spielberg, let’s hope Universal, uh, find a way.

Words by Dean Newman

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