Well I’ll be damned. After nearly sinking to a bloated budget, New Line Cinema’s The Meg has just surpassed $500M worldwide at the box office, which means it’s likely out of the red and into the black for the financiers/distributors. This is huge news for a film that was released into an ocean of drama after allegedly being dramatically changed from an R-rated affair to a broader PG-13. The budget is being reported from $130M up to $180M, and with a massive marketing spend, The Meg would need, at the very least, $500M to break even. For fans of the book and film, there’s much to celebrate here as this could lead to a sequel (if the producers are able to find a way to substantially trim the budget).
I have to admit that I’m shocked, but extremely happy to see yet another genre film find success at this summer’s box office. This is the perfect way to enter the fall as horror films are about to steamroll the competition starting with last weekend’s The Nun, which smashed the competition with an estimated $53.5 domestically ($131M worldwide).
In Jon Turteltaub’s mega shark flick The Meg:
“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.”
Rounding out the international main cast of Meg are New Zealander Cliff Curtis (The Dark Horse, Risen, TV’s Fear the Walking Dead), Rainn Wilson (TV’s The Office, Super), Ruby Rose (xXx: Return of Xander Cage, TV’s Orange is the New Black), Winston Chao(Skiptrace, Kabali), Page Kennedy (TV’s Rush Hour), Jessica McNamee (The Vow, TV’s Sirens), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (The BFG, TV’s The Missing), Robert Taylor (Focus, TV’s Longmire), Sophia Shuya Cai (Somewhere Only We Know), and Masi Oka (TV’s Hawaii Five-0, Heroes).
The Meg is an adaptation of the novel by Steve Alten.
