The Meg ditched the blood and gore in order to keep a PG-13 rating

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

When a giant Megalodon goes on the rampage, you'd expect a fairly sizable body count, and although THE MEG certainly comes with its fair share of prehistoric shark-related deaths, it will be keeping the chunky red bits to a minimum. While speaking with Bloody Disgusting, THE MEG director Jon Turteltaub joked that he was disappointed that his film wasn't more bloody or disgusting, but he's glad that his wife and kids are actually able to see it. That said, THE MEG did contain much more blood and gore at one point.

The number of really horrifying, disgusting and bloody deaths we had lined up that we didn’t get to do is tragic. There was some really good shit that didn’t survive to the final cut… We shot or even did a lot of visual effects for [gory scenes]. We just realized there’s no way we’re keeping this PG-13 if we show this. It’s too fun a movie to not let people who don’t like blood and people who are under, say, 14 years old into the theater. I was very hesitant to cut out a lot of blood and gore. I wouldn’t have if I thought it was wrecking the story but it wasn’t. It still looked okay. I’ll sit down privately with your audience and take them through some really nasty shit.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that we'll ever get to see those gory scenes on an unrated home-media release, because Jon Turteltaub doesn't believe that the studio will cough up the dough. "The problem nowadays with those unrated DVDs is you used to have a bunch of scenes that were easy to either shoot or leave on the cutting room floor," Turteltaub said. "Now to finish a scene costs millions in VFX. No one’s going to be spending millions of dollars just to have a little extra bonus footage." I suppose it's understandable that the studio wouldn't want to give an over-sized budget to an R-rated shark movie in this day and age, but just because THE MEG won't be as grisly as some had hoped, it doesn't mean that it won't be a hell of a lot of fun. The early reactions to the film have painted it as exactly the sort of big, dumb, giant-shark movie that you were expecting it to be.

The official synopsis for 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.

THE MEG will hit theaters on August 10th.