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Geek Tyrant
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
The JAWS Sequel That Almost Became a Ridiculous Comedy Called JAWS 3, PEOPLE 0 — GeekTyrant
The Jaws franchise took a nosedive after Steven Spielberg's original masterpiece. Jaws 2 played it safe. Jaws 3-D tried a gimmick, and Jaws: The Revenge ... well, that one had a shark hunting a specific family out of spite. But in an alternate timeline, the third Jaws movie could've gone completely off the rails! It almost became a full-blown comedy. Right after Jaws 2 , producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown were looking for a fresh angle. Audiences were already saturated with knockoffs with films like Grizzly , Orca , Tentacles , and so on. Horror was inching into satire territory, and Zanuck and Brown had just seen Universal score big with National Lampoon's Animal House . So they thought, why not lean into that energy? Enter Matty Simmons of National Lampoon. In the 2023 documentary Sharksploitation , Simmons recalled the surreal moment this all started: 'I was over at Universal. My next-door neighbors were Dick Zanuck and David Brown. First thing [Brown] said to me was, 'Dick and I would love to make a movie with you guys.' So, out of the blue — I just started kidding around — I just said, 'Jaws 3, People Nothing.' 'I said, 'Peter Benchley walks out of his house in a bathing suit, jumps into his pool, and disappears. And the next thing we see a fin floating around in the pool.' ... He said, 'I love it, I love it, I'll call you tomorrow. We're going to make this movie.'' That joke pitch turned into actual momentum. Writers Tod Carroll and a then-unknown John Hughes were brought on to write the script. Joe Dante, hot off his Piranha spoof, was offered the director's chair, thanks in part to Steven Spielberg himself stepping in to stop Universal from suing over Piranha. As Dante explained: 'Universal was very concerned and annoyed that Roger was putting out his rip-off of Jaws the same year that Jaws 2 was coming out, and so, they apparently threatened an injunction. 'I discovered much later that Spielberg had stepped in ... and said, 'No, you don't get it, this is a spoof, this isn't really a rip-off,' although it is a rip-off. And we basically got away with it, I guess is the phrase. And because of that, I was offered Jaws 3, People 0.' Sets were under construction, mechanical sharks were being built. Bo Derek was even circling the cast. It was happening… until it wasn't. The project fell apart. No one's totally sure why. Some point to Spielberg, others to the producers losing their nerve. But Dante believes it came down to creative differences between the Lampoon crew and the Jaws producers: 'The National Lampoon people wanted to make an R-rated comedy, like Animal House. And the more conservative Zanuck and Brown team wanted to make a PG and have it be a wide-release family picture ... ' I think the project died because they just couldn't agree on what movie they were making. And you can't go into a movie with two entities as powerful as National Lampoon was at that time and Zanuck and Brown and have them fighting constantly through the entire movie. It's just a bad idea, and I think they just pulled the plug.' Simmons put it even more bluntly: 'They had to choose between me and Spielberg, and I suspect they made the right choice.' Looking back, Jaws 3, People 0 feels like one of those legendary 'what-if' projects, something that might have bombed spectacularly or become a cult classic. The horror genre eventually embraced self-parody, but in 1983, this kind of meta-comedy was still uncharted waters. Would it have worked? Who knows. But a Jaws spoof written by John Hughes, directed by Joe Dante, and produced by the Animal House team is something we'd absolutely pay to see. If Universal ever wants to revive Jaws with a fresh angle, maybe it's time to bring back the one idea that was just too wild for 1983: a sequel that bites back with a smile.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Jaws' at 50: How Spielberg's movie changes ‘horrified' wife of novel writer Peter Benchley
A little over a year before Jaws opened in theaters and forever changed the next 50 years of cinema, it was a best-selling debut novel by author Peter Benchley. Producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who had acquired the rights to Jaws before its publication, turned to Benchley for the first few drafts of the screenplay, but it was ultimately something that, according to his wife, Wendy Benchley, was "hard for him." More from GoldDerby 'SNL's' 50th season takes on 9-time-champ 'Last Week Tonight' for the Best Scripted Variety Series Emmy 'Everything has an expiration date': Amy Poehler on her 'inappropriate' 'SNL' moments, including portraying Michael Jackson and Kim Jong-il Owen Wilson returning for 'Meet the Parents 4,' Academy Museum details 'Jaws' exhibit, and more of today's top stories "That is a completely different kind of writing," she tells Gold Derby ahead of the National Geographic documentary Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story. The producers moved on from Benchley after three drafts, bringing on a series of writers — including the film's one other credited scribe Carl Gottlieb — to shape the story of Chief Martin Brody and a man-eating shark into something the young director Steven Spielberg could eventually shoot. Over the course of many rewrites, much of Benchley's novel was jettisoned in favor of a leaner, meaner, more cinematic story. Readers familiar with the book know that Richard Dreyfuss' Matt Hooper has an affair with Ellen Brody (played in the film by Lorraine Gary), and Amity's greedy mayor, Larry Vaughn, is the craven man he is partly because of his ties to the mafia. All of that and more was excised for the final script. Universal Pictures/Everett Collection The rest of the production is the stuff of movie history — all thoroughly explored in the Nat Geo doc, which airs July 10 before heading to Hulu and Disney+ — but before Jaws hits theaters, producers Brown and Zanuck set a screening for Peter and Wendy Benchley, who brought along friends — including Ron and Valerie Taylor, who shot the film's live shark footage. "David Brown and Richard Zanuck asked Peter and I to go to a private screening of Jaws along with many of our dive friends — Ron and Valerie Taylor, Stan Waterman — and we had no idea whether this movie was going to really work with people who knew the ocean and knew sharks," she recalls in Jaws @ 50. "And at the end, they all got up and applauded and thought it was absolutely fabulous." What Benchley doesn't share in the documentary is her own reaction. "I thought it was a big departure," she tells Gold Derby. "I was completely sort of terrified, and, at times, sort of horrified." But considering that the movie she watched was literally Jaws, the differences between it and the novel couldn't completely get in the way of what she had just experienced. "Also I knew that it was thrilling and exciting and that Spielberg had put together this brilliant movie, and we were swept up," she said. "We were excited, thrilled, happy. Life was suddenly open to us in ways that it had never been before. So it was, it was a life changing development, and I hope we are worthy of it." _________ Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story premieres July 10 on National Geographic and begins streaming July 11 on Disney+ and Hulu; it is also available as a bonus feature on Universal's new 50th edition release of the film on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and digital. Best of GoldDerby Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') 'It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from 'Gerald's Game' to 'Hill House' to 'Life of Chuck' Click here to read the full article.
Washington Post
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The sequels that snatched defeat from the victory of ‘Jaws'
When 'Jaws' became one of the biggest cinematic hits in history in 1975, it was inevitable that producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown would go back into the water. 'If we didn't make it, somebody else would,' Brown said years later of the first follow-up. 'We felt very protective of it.'
