Meg 2: The Trench film posters surface

Shark film fans are gonna need a bigger wall, with the release of posters for the forthcoming giant megalodon shark sequel Meg 2: The Trench, which hits cinema screens on August 4.

One poster finds itself swimming in the same waters as the original, this time with returning star Jason Statham gaining a jet ski and brandishing what looks to be a harpoon – no sight of the sword he is said to be wafting in the trailer.

It’s also dipping one toe into the JAWS 2 poster design, with a very similar set up, which if intentional is a nice nod as that sequel to JAWS turns 45 this year.

The second poster shows Wu Jing hanging from a helicopter as the shark rises behind him, and we all know how the shark and helicopter face-off in JAWS 2 played out!

Both are labelled with the tagline, New Meg. Old Chum, showing us it is a new film – and shark – and that the chum is once again Jonas Taylor (Statham), who is our old familiar friend but also being served up as potential shark fodder again, as in chum.

To hear the word chum, it is hard to disassociate it from Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) on board the Orca complaining about chumming the water to Quint (Robert Shaw) , with the great white shark then rising and Brody telling the captain that he is gonna need a bigger boat.

No shark film can escape the shadow of JAWS, so it may as well embrace it. Plus, we know that the Meg 2 director, Ben Wheatley, is a big fan of the original JAWS. Who isn’t, right? The Meg (2018) was always more of a monster movie where the monster happened to be a giant shark, rather than a normal shark movie, and those proportions seem correct again based on these poster designs.  


And why mess with what isn’t broken? That original film earned over $500 million at the box office, making it it the third highest grossing shark film of all time after JAWS and JAWS 2 (adjusted for inflation). Will it score a bigger box office second time around? Only time will tell.

Words by Dean Newman

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