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This afternoon at the U.S.-China Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles at the Skirball Center, The Meg executive producer Catherine Xujun Ying acknowledged that that a sequel to summer’s shark movie is in the works.

“That is definitely the plan,” said Ying when asked by Variety’s Patrick Frater about building out the franchise during a panel for film and the future plans of The Meg 2 , “It’s still in the very early stages, but we’re working on it. We’re trying to keep it secret at this time.” Ying is the VP of CMC and CEO of Gravity Pictures who was involved heavily in financing The Meg which was distributed by Warner Bros. in U.S./Canada and a majority of overseas territories.

The Meg producer Belle Avery also is looking forward to sequels: She bought the rights to Steve Alten’s books. At this point in time, there are discussions in place to create Meg theme park rides over in the PROC.


From what Deadline knows, The Meg 2 hasn’t set any screenwriters yet, the project isn’t officially greenlit by Warner Bros, and for the studio to move forward with a part 2 it certainly has to out-wow the first installment. Having Gravity on board certainly makes The Meg 2 more of a reality. The panel discussed how going into production, the whole notion of a U.S.-China co-production was daunting as the failures were against them (not naming pics like The Great Wall and Warcraft). Coming away from The Meg, the consensus felt like this type of feat could certainly happen again.

At the top of the panel, it was mentioned that to date The Meg is the most successful U.S.-Chinese co-production ever at $527.8M WW beating the previous Sino-co-production champ, Kung Fu Panda 3 at $521.1M WW.

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One of 2018’s most successful movies was the Jason Statham giant shark movie The Meg. The film made over $500 million worldwide, making a sequel a no brainer, but we haven’t heard much about where The Meg 2 stands since then, other than the fact that it’s in the works. Well, at the press junket for Pet Sematary in Austin, CinemaBlend's own Sean O'Connell asked producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura for some insight about what’s happening with The Meg 2. He responded:

We’re working on a script. Yeah. So you never know until you get a good script. … I was very thankful that the audience got that we were just trying to have fun, [and] not take ourselves seriously at all.

When we first heard that The Meg 2 was actually happening, it was said that the sequel was in the very early stages and while it is still early and we are a ways off from a release date, it sounds like there is work being done. As Lorenzo di Bonaventura told Sean, they are currently working on a script for the film and seemingly taking their time to get that right before moving forward.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura did seem to hedge things a bit with “you never know,” seemingly not wanting to commit to anything firm on The Meg 2 until there is a script. There doesn’t seem to be a major rush and the focus at the moment is on getting that script and having it be good before the sequel moves to the next stage of development. But, it's encouraging to hear that the script is the primary driver of what happens next.

The other thing that Lorenzo di Bonaventura expressed to Sean was gratitude about the first film’s success and that the audience last summer really embraced The Meg and what it was going for. I think when the film was announced and we began to see trailers for it, the tone wasn’t entirely clear.

Some initially thought that The Meg was going to take a more serious approach than it ultimately did, but audiences, especially those internationally, really embraced it and showed up to have fun with a ridiculous giant shark movie that didn’t take itself seriously. Lorenzo di Bonaventura seems happy that the quintessential summer movie connected in that way.

What’s interesting about this is that although the silly approach worked at the box office, it didn’t work for everyone. Some people would have preferred the bloodier, R-rated cut that director Jon Turteltaub teased. One person who seemed to lament the gorier, adult film The Meg could have been is actually the film’s star Jason Statham.

As far as where a sequel could go, The Meg is based on a series of novels by Steve Alten and that could provide a pathway forward for the franchise. The sequels up the ante even more, introducing more creatures long though extinct that could delight summer audiences. Director Jon Turteltaub just wants to make sure that the franchise doesn’t turn into one with successively worse sequels where everything gets bigger, not better.

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Jason Statham will be back as Jonas Taylor in director Ben Wheatley‘s (Kill List, Sightseers, A Field in England, High-Rise, Rebecca, In the Earth) upcoming sequel to big-budget shark attack horror movie The Meg, and we’ve learned that filming is now getting set to begin!

KFTV reports that The Meg 2 will begin filming in the United Kingdom the week of January 24, with production taking place at “Warner Bro. Studios, Leavesden.” The studio complex in Southeast England was notably used for the many Harry Potter movies, as well as films including Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, The Dark Knight, Inception, and Last Night in Soho.

“Shooting will run until late May,” the site notes.

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Meg 2: The Trench has found its shark bait.

Sienna Guillory, the Resident Evil actress last seen in Clifford the Big Red Dog; Skyler Samuels, who starred in Fox’s superhero show The Gifted; and Snowfall actor Sergio Peris-Mencheta have signed on to Warner Bros.’ sequel to its 2018 surprise hit featuring a very hungry prehistoric shark, known as a megalodon, which fights a very svelte Jason Statham.

Additionally, Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai and Page Kennedy are reprising their roles, joining Statham in more shark-hunting shenanigans.

Ben Wheatley, known for his stylish thrillers such as Free Fire and High-Rise, is helming the adventure thriller that is now shooting in the U.K.

Plot details are hidden in the chum, but it’s a safe bet to say that more shark gnashing and noshing will be involved.

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.

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Wu Jing, the highest-grossing male actor of all time in China, will join British action star Jason Statham in Warner Bros.’s “Meg 2: The Trench,” sources close to the production have confirmed to Variety.

The giant shark actioner, however, will be without Li Bingbing (“Transformers: Age of Extinction”). The Chinese actor, who played a female oceanographer, embodying both brains and beauty in Jon Turteltaub’s testosterone-fueled 2018 “The Meg,” is not returning to the franchise at this point.

With Ben Wheatley in the directing chair, production on “Meg 2: The Trench” began at the end of January at the Warner-owned Leavesden Studios outside London. It will continue there until May before switching to outdoor locations, likely to be in Asia.

The 47-year-old Wu is a former martial artist who has successfully parlayed a career as both actor and director in film and in TV. A protégé of the iconic action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, Wu enjoyed early success in Hong Kong-made titles including “SPL” (2005) and “Invisible Target” (2007) and had a minor role in 2008’s “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” behind Brendan Fraser and Jet Li.

Wu wrote and directed mainland Chinese actioner “Wolf Warrior” in 2015, which earned a decent $80 million at the Chinese box office. But the concept turned to gold two years later with the even more patriotic and bloodthirsty “Wolf Warrior II” which grossed $870 million. The franchise was so successful that it gave its name to China’s current uncompromising form of diplomatic relations.

Since 2017, Wu has starred in or featured prominently in seven movies that have each topped $100 million at the box office, including ground-breaking Chinese sci-fi title “The Wandering Earth” and propaganda anthologies “My People, My Country” and “My Country, My Parents.”

Since October, Wu’s two latest films, all-time Chinese record breaker “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” and currently on-release “The Battle at Lake Changjin II,” have together grossed more than $1.4 billion.

“There is no female Chinese lead this time, but there is Sophia, the teenage daughter, lots of women and an incredibly diverse cast.” In “The Meg,” Cai Shuya (aka Sophia Cai) played the daughter of Li’s oceanographer character.

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