Can You Make a Great Shark Attack Movie in 2025?

It’s been 50 years since Jaws simultaneously invented and perfected the concept of the modern summer blockbuster. No less than King Kong or the monolith in 2001, the marauding (and famously malfunctioning) great white known colloquially as Bruce casts a long silhouette on both movie history and popular culture at large. The success of Steven Spielberg’s classic has ensured that, to paraphrase Tracy Jordan, every week is Shark Week. Cleverly adapted from Peter Benchley’s bestseller about a tourist community under attack by a rogue carnivore—the ultimate self-reflexive beach read—Jaws fused primal B-movie fears with the mature textures and techniques of the New Hollywood; its eventual presence in a then-record 700 theaters effectively created a new template for theatrical release patterns that prized opening weekend revenue over word of mouth and revolutionized mass-media marketing.