New ‘The Meg’ Image Reveals the Massive Shark on the Prowl!!! Check It Out!!

Jason Statham meets Jaws? Yep, that’s gonna get some butts in the seats. Such is the setup for The Meg, the new action thriller starring Statham as a navy captain and rescue diver hired to face down a prehistoric shark and save a team of scientist trapped at the bottom of the sea. Inspired by Steve Alten’s 1997 novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, The Meg promises one super huge shark, a full 75-foot-long megalodon previously thought extinct.

EW has a new image from the film showing off the scope of the sea creature, and it’s nightmare fuel for the Galeophobics out there. They also spoke with Statham about his prep for the role, which included swimming with some real deal sharks. Before he became an actor, Statham was a competitive diver on the British national team, so he’s no stranger to the water, a fact that will no doubt make for some great underwater action scenes.

“On the early stages of the prep, we took a trip to Fiji, and we went diving with some bull sharks. They hand-feed them and it’s a spectacular thing to see. These things are three meters in length, huge big things,” Statham told the outlet. “There were 20 or 30 of these things, and they were hand-feeding [them] big tuna heads, and we got very, very close, and it was a spectacular moment. To swim in close proximity to a big, three-meter shark, is to be recommended to all and everyone.”

National Treasure and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice director Jon Turteltaub takes the helm for the sci-fi action adventure from a script by Dean Georgaris(Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life) and Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber (Red). Li Bing-Bing, Cliff Curtis, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose,Winston Chao, Page Kennedy, Jessica McNamee, Ólafur Darris Ólafsson, Sophia Shuya Cai, and Heroes alum Masi Oka also star. Check out the latest image below.

Image via Warner Bros.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Meg:

“In the film, 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 (Jason 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.”

The Meg arrives in theaters on August 10, 2018.

via Collider