Ever since author Steve Alten's shark attack novel MEG hit shelves in 1997, someone has been trying to make a movie out of it. While housed at New Line Cinema in the mid-'00s, it got very close to filming with Guillermo Del Toro producing and Jan De Bont directing from a screenplay by Shane Salerno. Then things fell apart over budgetary issues.
The film rights eventually lapsed back to Alten, and according to Tracking-Board the author has gotten MEG set up at a new studio – Warner Bros., of which New Line Cinema is now a subsidiary.
MEG is said to be a priority project for Warner. Colin Wilson and Belle Avery are set to produce, with Andrew Fischel and Cate Adams overseeing for the studio, and the search is on for a director. The latest draft of the script was written by TRISTAN + ISOLDE's Dean Georgaris.
If MEG is finally made, it comes with built in franchise potential, as Alten has written three sequels to his novel, with another sequel and a prequel in the works. The series follows
a team of scientists that must capture a massive prehistoric shark, long believed to be extinct, that becomes unearthed from the depths of the Mariana Trench. The species in question is that of the Carcharodon Megalodon, an apex predator that reached nearly 80 ft, and went extinct around two million years ago.
I haven't read Alten's novel, but I've been following the adaptation's progress, or lack thereof, with great interest for years. The market has gotten flooded with lower budgeted shark attack movies since MEG was first published, but I think the world needs a big budget studio shark thriller. Especially one with an 80 foot shark. I really hope MEG will happen this time.