Jaws 2

Jaws 2 (1978)

Timing: 1:57 (117 min)

6/10
2100

6.172/10
26530

5.8/10
92000

All about film

Video 4

Photo 83

Actors and characters

Release date

1978-06-16

Country

United States

Production

Universal Pictures, Zanuck/Brown Productions

Genre

Horror, Thriller

Budget

$20 000 000

Revenue

$187 884 000

Website

Director

Jeannot Szwarc

Actors

Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Joseph Mascolo, Jeffrey Kramer, Collin Wilcox Paxton, Ann Dusenberry, Mark Gruner, Barry Coe, Susan French
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Richard D. Zanuck, David Brown

Operator

Michael C. Butler

Composer

John Williams

Artist

Audition

Editing

Arthur Schmidt, Neil Travis, Steve Potter
All team (25)

• Initially, director John Hancock began filming the movie, but he was fired.
• Steven Spielberg intended to direct this sequel with Richard Dreyfuss, but he was occupied filming "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977).
• The filmmakers used the same mechanical shark as in the first film.
• Filming took place on Martha's Vineyard Island (Massachusetts) off the east coast of the United States (home to six small resort towns), but due to weather difficulties, most of the film was shot on the beaches of Florida.
• Filming began on August 1, 1977, and ended on December 22 of the same year.
• The film is based on Peter Benchley's novel, and in one scene, a young man aboard a yacht is reading his book 'Jaws'.
• The wreckage of the schooner seen in the opening scene is the 'Orca' – the schooner from the first film.
• In the fall of 1977, they had to return to the Vineyard area to reshoot some scenes. But by that time the leaves had fallen from the trees, so the crew had to glue artificial leaves onto the branches to show that it was still summer.
• Most of the film was shot in the fall and winter, so the actors had to suck on ice before filming a scene to prevent their breath from showing.
• The helicopter scene required four days of filming.
• In some scenes, the operator put a horse saddle on the shark's back to make filming more comfortable.
• Once during filming, real sharks appeared around the yacht with the actors. The actors started screaming, to which the crew members, who continued filming, gave them a thumbs-up, assuming they were in character and unaware that they were actually in danger.
• Mark Greuner's final film.
• Keith Gordon's film debut.
• One of the film cameras burned out during the shooting of a scene where the shark grabs an electrical wire and combusts.
• The small island with a substation was actually just a set. The island was made of plastic and fiberglass and was located on two barges. Its surface was so slippery that it was difficult to stay on. Because of this, many scenes had to be reshot again and again, as the actors slipped and fell. Once, the barges, which were poorly secured, were carried out to sea, requiring a search and tow back, which meant delays in filming. Director Jeannot Szwarc later often recalled how he was told that his set was on its way to Cuba.
• Initially, Roy Scheider did not want to star in this film, but he had just turned down a role with Michael Cimino in the war drama *The Deer Hunter* (1978), which led to problems with Universal Pictures, with whom he had a contract for several films. They agreed to let the *Deer Hunter* issue slide if Scheider starred in this film. The actor agreed, but still harbored resentment, which in turn led to a series of scandals with director Jeannot Szwarc.
• The young actors involved in the filming underwent a four-week sailing course.
• A helicopter was used in the film, owned by Jerry M. Baxter, who played the helicopter pilot. Baxter built the full-scale helicopter model that the shark grabs, and after filming, he sold the model to Universal Pictures.
• Having read somewhere that they couldn't find a director for *Jaws 2*, Steven Soderbergh (who was 14 at the time) wrote a letter to Universal offering to direct the film for no fee. Producer Richard D. Zanuck read the letter and just smiled. Many years later, when Soderbergh had become an established director, Zanuck and Soderbergh met at a film festival, Zanuck showed Soderbergh the letter (he had brought it specifically) and said that now, “considering how things turned out with *Jaws 2*, he would definitely have accepted the offer outlined in the letter.”
• When filming had just begun, John D. Hancock was the director, and Amity was intended to be shown as a ghost town whose economy had been ruined by the events depicted in the first film of the franchise. Hancock struggled with this. The residents of Martha's Vineyard, where filming took place, flatly refused to allow their doors and windows to be boarded up and shop windows to be covered. Furthermore, the studio constantly criticized the footage already shot and asked for the overall atmosphere of the film to be less bleak. According to Hancock, he was eventually fired as a result of a power struggle between producer Richard D. Zanuck and Sid Sheinberg of “MCA.” Specifically, Sheinberg insisted on expanding the role of Lorraine Gary (his wife, who played Ellen, the protagonist’s wife). Zanuck categorically refused to do so, and as a result, Dorothy Tristan, Hancock’s then-wife and screenwriter, wrote a script version that did not include the changes Sheinberg was pushing for. On top of everything, Hancock had problems with one of the actresses in the film, fired her from the cast, and then it turned out she was close to someone in “MCA” management. Work on the film had been underway for a year and a half, filming itself had been going on for a month, when Hancock and Tristan were removed from the project, which led to further delays and the subsequent firing of Jean Schwartz. The film retained two scenes shot by Hancock – the scene where a shark fin appears on the surface at the beginning of the film, and the scene where an unnamed character nearly becomes a shark’s victim.
• The sharks from the original 1975 film were stored outdoors on the grounds of “Universal Studios,” but rotted in the open air, leaving only metal frames.
• The sharks created by Robert A. Mattei were more complex than those shown in the first film of the franchise. The body was the same, but a new head by Chris Mueller was attached to it, with new and more advanced mechanisms for controlling the jaw.