It blew expectations OUT OF THE WATER.
August isn’t really autumn, so we’re claiming The Meg as a summer release despite arriving some 10 days into the eighth month of the year.
We were a bit wishy-washy about the end product of what essentially amounts to ‘Statham versus Shark’ with our own Rory Cashin noting that the movie lived up to his monstrous expectations… for about three minutes in total.
This writer found it a bit of a damp squib, too, but did enjoy the bit where the filmmakers quite clearly used an actor’s official headshot photograph during his funeral scene.
Even the man himself Jason Statham has voiced concerns about the finished film, confessing that the theatrical cut seriously toned down the movie he signed on for.
“The script’s totally different,” Statham told Collider in a recent interview.
“Sometimes you just go, ‘How did it happen? How did it go from this to this to this to that?…It was radically different.
“I guess in some ways your imagination and your own perception of what it’s going to be is its worst enemy,” the Stath concluded.
And he’s right. The Meg is ultimately not violent and gory enough to be notable in that regard, nor does it fully commit to stupidity and high camp like Deep Blue Sea did.
Still, the marketing campaign and the simple tease of Statham battling a prehistoric shark has proved to be enough for the moviegoing public, and then some.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that for the third summer in a row, shark movies are big business.
Initially expected to enjoy a fairly modest opening, The Meg took in $44.5 million in North America on its debut weekend, knocking Mission: Impossible – Fallout off its perch.
It also marks the biggest opening of all time for a shark movie.
That’s just one slice of the pie, as the combined worldwide take comes to a whopping $141.3 million, so it’s already close to making its budget back already after just a few days.
With numbers like that, perhaps Statham will get to spill some proper blood in the sequel.
And if you can’t get enough deep sea terror action, there’s a sequel to 47 Meters Down on the way, even if they’ve totally botched the title already…
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