This week sees the release of Jon Turteltaub’s The Meg, which includes plenty of scenes of the huge shark chomping down on swimmers off the Chinese coast.
Speaking with Bloody Disgusting, Turteltaub confirmed the film originally had too many R-rated gory scenes that had to be cut in order to keep the rating at PG-13. Not only were some of the scenes already filmed, but the digital effects were even complete for a number of them, only to be cut at the last minute:
“My wife is glad about it and I’m glad my kids can see the movie, but the number of really horrifying, disgusting and bloody deaths we had lined up that we didn’t get to do is tragic… We shot or even did a lot of visual effects for (gory scenes)… We just realized there’s no way we’re keeping this PG-13 if we show this. It’s too fun a movie to not let people who don’t like blood and people who are under, say, fourteen years old into the theater. I was very hesitant to cut out a lot of blood and gore. I wouldn’t have if I thought it was wrecking the story but it wasn’t.”
The film is being sold and lauded for its sense of fun far more than as a serious shark attack film, and Turteltaub says he was striving to keep that intact while editing the film. He also confirms there will be no director’s or unrated cut for the home video release.
