The Shark Is Broken: Play About the Making of Jaws Coming to Broadway

Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is an iconic film and is a cinematic staple for countless movie audiences, but even though it earned tremendous success when it landed in theaters in 1975, it suffered countless setbacks during its development that seemed to spell disaster for the project. While documentaries have previously been made about the subject, the stage production The Shark Is Broken is set to make its premiere on Broadway after having already earned acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and on London’s West End. The play was written by Joseph Nixon and Ian Shaw, with Shaw being the son of actor Robert Shaw, who played Quint in the original movie. The Shark Is Still Broken is set to premiere on Broadway on August 10th.

“I had always loved the film, particularly the scene where the three main characters show their scars and bond, leading into my father’s delivery of the famous Indianapolis speech, and the subsequent shark attack,” Shaw shared with Entertainment Weekly about developing the play. “Robert was a writer and had rewritten the speech into the one that has become an iconic moment in cinema, not forgetting that he had originally been too drunk to complete it the day before, and had to beg Spielberg to try again the next day.”

Much like how he hadn’t anticipated writing the play, he hadn’t predicted he would portray his father in the production, until he noticed an undeniable similarity.

“One day, when I had a mustache for a part I was playing, I looked in the mirror and Quint was staring back at me,” Shaw confessed. “I had read about the troubled times they had on the set, and was fascinated by the three distinctive personalities at different stages in their careers.I wasn’t working and I thought I should sketch out an idea for a play, set on Quint’s boat, the Orca. Then I felt that it was a crazy idea, and the dangers of attempting to portray my father, warts and all, was too risky to contemplate.It took my friends and family to give the courage to pursue the idea, and when Joseph Nixon and I wrote it, we realized that we had a funny and touching story that was more universal than I had feared.”

Shaw is joined in the production by Colin Donnell as Roy Scheider and Alex Brightman as Richard Dreyfuss. Rather than being a linear depiction of all the struggles the production faced, The Shark Is Broken is an homage to the development of the film, its cast and crew, the story itself, and the fans that keep its spirit alive.

“It’s a homage to all those who made Jaws such a stunning movie, and to the fans who have kept its flame alive,” Shaw detailed. “It is also a poem about the three men who hunted the shark, and to anyone who struggles to create stories that have meaning.”

The Shark Is Broken premieres on Broadway on August 10th.

Will you be checking out the production? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!