'The Meg' Trailer: Jason Statham Versus A Giant Shark. Do You Need More?

I’m a simple man with simple tastes. Tell me you have a movie where Jason Statham fights a giant shark, and I will watch that movie. Hence, my excitement for The Meg (though I’ve seen people rant about how it should just be called Meg, make of that what you will). It’s a film, perhaps a cinematic experience, that exists, and now it has a trailer.

I don’t know why there’s a small child living on what looks like a fancy scientific undersea habitat, but what the hell? I’m sure that won’t be the only choice in The Meg that makes me scratch my head. Seriously, just look at this trailer, it’s going to shoehorn in some groany one-liners from Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose plays a character named Jaxx Herd, and it’s all helmed by Jon Turtletaub of National Treasure fame (he also directed 3 Ninjas and Cool Runnings, so…)

But The Meg also has one thing no other movie has, Jason Statham fighting a giant shark. And not just a giant shark, a giant prehistoric shark. Come on, you either want to watch that movie or you don’t. And I very much do.

Here’s the synopsis:

A deep-sea submersible is 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 to save the crew from this prehistoric threat.

Based on Steve Alten’s novel, The Meg was originally intended as an Eli Roth joint. I don’t know how that would have changed things, though I imagine it would be R-rated, bloodier, and feature more nudity than the PG-13 version we’ll see this summer.

The Meg opens August 10 and I’m curious to see how it performs. This could be one of those fun, goofy, late-in-the-season breaths of fresh air that audiences latch onto after an exhaustive summer schedule of tentpole after tentpole. Or viewers may ignore it completely, fatigued by that point by the aforementioned onslaught of massive summer movies.

UPDATED: Now with 100% more poster!