Meg 2: The Trench, director Ben Wheatley’s sequel to Jon Turteltaub’s 2018 “Jason Statham vs. a giant shark” movie The Meg (watch it at THIS LINK), is now exactly one month into production, with filming expected to continue until late May. Now that cameras have been rolling for a while, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that returning star Jason Statham is being joined in the cast by fellow returning cast members Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai, and Page Kennedy. There had been a rumor that Bingbing Li would be back as well, but she is not mentioned in this THR report. It is mentioned that new additions to the cast include Sienna Guillory (Resident Evil: Apocalypse), Skyler Samuels (The Gifted), and Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Rambo: Last Blood). Guillory and Peris-Mencheta were also both in Resident Evil: Afterlife.
Some character info: “Peris-Mencheta is playing one of the film’s antagonists, a hard-edged mercenary. Guillory is the head of an applied sciences division, while Samuels is an adventure-loving member of Statham’s submarine crew.”
So Statham is going to have to deal with hard-edged mercenaries in addition to a giant shark in this one. The guy never catches a break.
The screenplay for Meg 2: The Trench has been written by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, and Erich Hoeber, the same writing team that was on the first film. These films are inspired by a series of novels written by Steve Alten.
Wheatley told Collider last year that he chose to direct Meg 2 because he “really loved” the first film.
I usually just go with my gut, so if something comes across from my agent and I like it, then I just go for it. So this came up and I just went, ‘Oh, Christ! Meg 2, I’ll do that! That’s brilliant!’
Speaking with ComicBook.com, Wheatley said he was also interested in the project because
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 to all the big shark fans out there.”
Wheatley’s previous credits include Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers, A Field in England, High-Rise, Free Fire, Rebecca, and In the Earth.