The Meg Star Addresses Their Return for Sequel

The sequel to The Meg is seemingly only in the early stages of development, with actress Jessica McNamee being unclear about whether or not we could expect her character to return, though she’d be more than happy to reprise her role. McNamee played Lori in the first film, who was the ex-wife of Jason Statham‘s Jonas, with it being possible that the project is in early enough stages that she hasn’t been updated about the project, or that the sequel is moving forward without Lori having much representation. The Meg sequel doesn’t yet have a release date, but will star Statham and be directed by Ben Wheatley.

“I don’t even know! I’m not across it. I should be. I’m a terrible person. I mean, that would be the dream,” McNamee shared with Collider about her involvement. “I would love to be involved. I had such a blast filming that movie. Jason’s great and the whole process was so fun. We got to shoot in New Zealand. I also heard they’re potentially shooting it in Australia, which would be amazing. It’s the only way I could get back into the damn country at this point!”

The original film was based on the 1997 novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by author Steve Alten. While that book has its own novel sequels, it’s unknown if those book sequels will be the inspiration for the cinematic follow-up. McNamee noted that, given how different the first film was from its source material, her lack of knowledge about the new installment could be due to the upcoming film following a similar deviation.

“They do deviate from the books quite a lot. I don’t even know where they’re gonna go with the second one,” the actress admitted. “They are talking a sequel, but like I said, the first one deviates so much from the books so they could go in a whole different direction. We’re not really sure.”

News of Wheatley directing the new adventure both surprised and excited fans, given how he’s known for more independent genre films than massive spectacles. The filmmaker previously teased his approach to the new film.

“A lot of it is respecting The Meg, and trying to make sure it’s a great Meg film,” Wheatley shared with ComicBook.com about the new film. “And as you can see from the movies I’ve made, they’re not necessarily, it’s not … when you go and do Doctor Who, I don’t completely change it because I wanted to do it. I didn’t want to necessarily make it something completely different that nobody recognized, you know? So there’s that element of back and forth.”

He continued, “But it’s an opportunity to do action on such an insanely large scale, that it’s just unbelievable. From doing Free Fire, which was, I thought, was all my Christmases came at once in terms of action, this is just unbelievable. And just doing the storyboards for it, just thinking and going, ‘Oh,’ it’s just … I feel a heavy responsibility for it, to make sure that it kind of delivers on all the, to all the big shark fans out there.”

Stay tuned for updates on The Meg sequel.

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