Movies
‘Meg’ Author Steve Alten Says Movie Will Be “Edge of Your Seat Scary”
A $150 million shark movie. Have I died and gone to heaven?
Prior to last year’s The Shallows, we hadn’t seen a killer shark on the big screen in quite some time, and it’s possible that the film’s box office success could pave the way for much more where that came from. First up is the long-gestating adaptation of Steve Alten’s novel Meg, which is set to hit theaters on March 2nd, 2018. Alten just spoke with iHorror about the upcoming film.
What can we expect? Alten promises it’ll make us afraid of the water again:
Filming completed in New Zealand and China in mid-December. I have not seen any footage other than what has been posted on Instagram but I understand everything looks amazing. It will be edge-of-your-seat scary.
Alten added that the film has “the best special effects in the business, a $150 million budget, a great script, [and] an international cast of top stars… led by the perfect guy to play Jonas Taylor, Jason Statham.” Yes, Jason freakin’ Statham will battle the film’s massive Megalodon. Excited yet?
In 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 (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…bringing him face to face once more with the greatest and largest predator of all time.
Rounding out the international main cast of Meg are New Zealander Cliff Curtis (The Dark Horse, Risen, TV’s Fear the Walking Dead), Rainn Wilson (TV’s The Office, Super), Ruby Rose (xXx: Return of Xander Cage, TV’s Orange is the New Black), Winston Chao (Skiptrace, Kabali), Page Kennedy (TV’s Rush Hour), Jessica McNamee (The Vow, TV’s Sirens), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (The BFG, TV’s The Missing), Robert Taylor (Focus, TV’s Longmire), Sophia Shuya Cai (Somewhere Only We Know), and Masi Oka (TV’s Hawaii Five-0, Heroes).
Jon Turteltaub directed the film from a screenplay by Dean Georgaris and Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber, based on the New York Times best-selling book by Steve Alten. Lorenzo di Bonaventura (the Transformers films), Belle Avery (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead) and Colin Wilson (Suicide Squad, Avatar) are producing the film, with Wayne Wei Jiang, Randy Greenberg, Barrie M. Osborne and Gerald R. Molen serving as executive producers.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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