Whether you loved it (like me) or hated it (like someone who’s not me), one thing you should at least appreciate about The Shallows is that it’s one of the very few serious shark movies to come along in the past several decades. Save for so few notable exceptions that I can count them on one hand, minus a couple fingers, post-Jaws shark flicks have been laughably bad and over-the-top silly, often quite intentionally. But with his latest film, Jaume Collet-Serra admirably does a whole lot of course correction for the sub-genre that began with, and was totally defined by, Spielberg’s legendary classic.

The surprising box office success of The Shallows certainly seems to prove that audiences are hungry for shark cinema that packs a bite, especially when it’s smartly timed to the start of Discovery’s hugely popular Shark Week, and I can’t help but wonder if we may have a new annual tradition on our hands. Will Collet-Serra’s horror hit lead to a resurgence of sharksploitation films? More importantly, has the groundwork just been laid for the inevitable return of the long-dead Jaws franchise?

Given how dominated the current summer landscape is by reboots and sequels to beloved properties, it’s surprising that Jaws, the film that essentially coined the term “summer blockbuster,” has managed to avoid the remake chopping block these past 40 years. The franchise last swam its way onto the big screen with series-killer Jaws: The Revenge back in 1987, and in the past thirty years, not a peep has been heard from it. You won’t find me complaining about that, but if you know how Hollywood works, you’ve probably realized by now that it won’t be much longer before Jaws surfaces from the deep.

The smartest way to bring Jaws back? It’s damn sure not with a remake.

While watching The Shallows, I was struck with the feeling that I was watching a Jaws movie that wasn’t marketed as a Jaws movie. In other words, if it was re-branded in post-production and released into theaters as Jaws: The Shallows, I’m not sure anyone would’ve bat an eye or cried foul. And I believe that therein lies the key to bringing Jaws back to life in a way that fans will actually be on board with.

[Related] We Need More Killer Shark Movies

Earlier this year, 10 Cloverfield Lane brilliantly pushed the boundaries of franchise cinema and in many ways shattered all the molds, showing that the future of movie franchises may very well be much broader “cinematic universes.” The J.J. Abrams-produced film, which began its life as a standalone indie movie titled The Cellar, didn’t actually have much of anything to do with the found footage flick Cloverfield, but tethering it to the franchise proved to be a smart way to both get asses in the seats and give fans of the 2008 film something different yet something part of that same universe.

Which reminds me of something.

If John Carpenter had his way, the Halloween franchise would’ve ditched the Michael Myers story post-Halloween 2 and instead been used as an umbrella under which to tell stories that shared nothing in common aside from all being set on Halloween night, and he was pretty far ahead of his time in thinking that way. What he hoped to create was what we’d now call the Halloween Cinematic Universe, and it’s still kind of a bummer that it didn’t work out. But fans today, as evidenced by the success of 10 Cloverfield Lane and the years-later appreciation of Halloween 3, seem much more willing to accept that anthology approach to franchise cinema. And Jaws may be the perfect candidate to test those waters.

Rather than foolishly attempt to remake Spielberg’s original or somehow try to continue the Brody family’s increasingly strange and utterly nonsensical saga, it’d probably be much smarter business on the part of Universal Studios to instead give rise to a “Jaws Cinematic Universe.” The franchise, for starters, allows for limitless creative freedom, as any movie released under that umbrella need only feature a killer shark in order to technically pass as a Jaws movie. Each new film could be set in a different location and feature different characters, allowing for an innovative new franchise that wouldn’t have to ever worry about continuing previous storylines or setting the stage for future installments.

If the Jaws franchise must come back, why not bring it back in the most palatable form possible? We get more original shark movies on the big screen and Universal gets to inoffensively milk a massive cash cow that they’ve refrained from touching these past three decades. Sounds to me like a win-win for all.

The Jaws Cinematic Universe. I like the sound of it.