No offense to Jason Statham, who’s inarguably one of cinema’s biggest action stars and headlined The Meg, which earned over $530 million at the box office, but when you’re making a mega budget creature feature about a giant terror with an axe to grind against humanity, the human element is the least important aspect in the eyes of audiences, something that was true of both the original and its upcoming sequel.
Indeed, it’s a recurring theme throughout the genre as a whole. For instance, Godzilla vs. Kong‘s Alexander Skarsgard took top billing in the credits of the highest-grossing Hollywood blockbuster released since the end of 2019, but even he was happy to poke fun at his role by holding his hands up and admitting that nobody was paying to see him play a discredited geologist in the MonsterVerse.
Ben Wheatley will be behind the camera for The Meg 2, which is a hugely exciting prospect in itself looking at how eclectic and often insane his back catalogue of detours into wildly different genre territory has been, with Statham confirming recently that shooting is tentatively penciled in to kick off in January of next year.
Mortal Kombat star Jessica McNamee, meanwhile, sat on the sidelines for the majority of The Meg having been injured in the prologue, but the actress admitted that she’d be more than happy to return for another round.
“I don’t even know! I’m not across it. I should be. I’m a terrible person. I mean, that would be the dream. I would love to be involved. I had such a blast filming that movie. Jason’s great and the whole process was so fun. We got to shoot in New Zealand. I also heard they’re potentially shooting it in Australia, which would be amazing. It’s the only way I could get back into the damn country at this point!”
Jon Turteltaub’s first installment didn’t really maximize the potential of the premise, falling into formula on a regular basis, but the presence of Wheatley should at least promise that The Meg 2 is going to be an entirely different beast from its predecessor in more ways than one. In any case, a $150 million action horror hybrid comes burdened with almost limitless possibilities, so let’s hope the creative team makes the most of them.