‘The Meg’ Producer Confirms Sequel Is Being Developed

The Meg landed in theaters earlier this summer and, while it wasn’t a certified blockbuster at the domestic box office, the international appeal resulted in the film scoring more than $500 million worldwide. This success seems to be enough to warrant a follow-up film, with executive producer Catherine Xujun Ying confirming she aims to move forward with a sequel.

“That is definitely the plan,” Ying shared at a panel at the U.S.-China Entertainment Summit when asked about a sequel. “It’s still in the very early stages, but we’re working on it. We’re trying to keep it secret at this time.”

Not only will the film potentially get sequels, but Ying teased that the film was such a success, it could be the inspiration for theme park attractions.

“Hopefully China will have the first Jurassic aquarium,” Ying shared.

The film was based on the novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by author Steve Alten, which was followed by four sequels. It’s unclear if follow-up films will explore the storylines of those novels.

In the film, “A deep-sea submersible—part of an international undersea observation program—has been attacked by a massive creature, previously thought to be extinct, and now lies disabled at the bottom of the deepest trench in the Pacific…with its crew trapped inside. With time running out, expert deep sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) is recruited by a visionary Chinese oceanographer (Winston Chao), against the wishes of his daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing), to save the crew—and the ocean itself—from this unstoppable threat: a pre-historic 75-foot-long shark known as the Megalodon. What no one could have imagined is that, years before, Taylor had encountered this same terrifying creature. Now, teamed with Suyin, he must confront his fears and risk his own life to save everyone trapped below…bringing him face to face once more with the greatest and largest predator of all time.”

Director Jon Turteltaub sounded just as surprised as anyone that the film took in such an impressive worldwide total.

“We were being laughed at by a lot of people for making this movie,” the director shared. “Before it came out, the tracking was horrible. They were saying this is a huge mistake, Warner Brothers has blown it, China is done.”

A feature-film adaptation of the project has been in development virtually since the novel was released, with multiple stops and starts ultimately resulting in Alten regaining the rights to his story, leading to this successful adaptation.

The Meg is out now on Digital HD and lands on Blu-ray and DVD on November 13th.

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[H/T Variety]