JAWS-inspired Broadway play The Shark Is Broken is not gonna need a bigger billboard

You can catch The Shark Is Broken from 25th July 2023 at the Golden Theater, New York, NYC.

“You're gonna need a bigger boat”, as uttered by Roy Scheider's Chief Brody in the 1975 Steven Spielberg summer smash JAWS, is rightly regarded as a classic line and moment in cinema.

Fast forward almost 50 years to Broadway and a comedy about the exploits bringing that film to screen, is going down a storm with critics and theater goers.

Not that there will be in any danger of missing where it is playing to November 19 as the Golden Theater has a giant billboard of its cast of three, so that - that's right - they’re not gonna need a bigger one.

The image shows Ian Shaw - son of JAWS Quint actor Robert Shaw -, Colin Donnell and Alex Brightman dressed as the characters Quint, Brody and Hooper, as played by Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss in the shark film classic.

And if that image looks familiar it's because it is a startling recreation of one that was taken ahead of promotion of the film when it was released across the US on June 20, 1975, where it became not just the then highest grossing film of all time (until the release of Star Wars in 1977), but would become the first film to ever swim past the $100 million box office barrier in the US. Many have done it since, but JAWS was the first.

Although not everywhere in the world saw the film get a summer release, as it didn't open in the UK in 1975 until Boxing Day, 1975, one day after Christmas Day!

That role has been reversed with The Shark Is Broken, as that was first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe before swimming down to London and an Olivier Award nomination, before stopping off in Toronto, and now docking in New York.

Words by Dean Newman

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