Tales From Development Hell: Jaws 3, People 0
By Ryan Fleming.
Sequels have been seen as exercises in declining returns, none more so than those functioning as sequels to either commercially successful blockbusters or critically acclaimed masterpieces. Or both, as is the case with the sequels to Steven Speilberg’s Jaws (1975). That series went from the original summer blockbuster and highest grossing film of all time to a retread notable mainly for its tagline with Jaws 2 (1978), to a trite exercise in a long-dead gimmick nominated for multiple Razzies with Jaws 3-D (1983), before finally turning in an early seqoot that became widely regarded as one of the worst films of all time with Jaws: The Revenge (1988).
This need not have been the entire path that the series took, for before they took a venture into the third dimension the original idea for the second sequel would have been a self-referential parody of the films entitled Jaws 3, People 0.
Sequels were not unheard of by the time Jaws went on to an unprecedented success, but they were by no means guaranteed. Said unprecedented success was definitely something the studio wanted to try to replicate, so Universal began asking for a sequel whilst Jaws was still in theatres. David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck, the producers of Jaws, quickly came to the conclusion that Universal would just make it without them so agreed to a sequel. Director Steven Spielberg could not be lured back, however, with the future director of The Lost World: Jurassic Park and three Indiana Jones sequels dismissing the very notion as “a cheap carny trick.”
Thus began a long 18-month pre-production, with the first treatment from Howard Sackler, who did uncredited work on the first film’s screenplay, proposing a prequel featuring a younger version of Quint (played by Robert Shaw in Jaws) and the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. This idea was passed over in favour of a more straightforward retread of the first. It was originally to be directed by John D. Hancock, who inherited many of the same troubles that plagued filming of Jaws, whilst also facing endless tinkering by the studio including edicts about a more heroic role for one studio executive’s wife (Lorraine Garry) and firing the girlfriend of another executive. Hancock was fired after spending eighteen months on the film.
Carl Gottlieb, co-writer of the Jaws, was brought on board to rewrite the screenplay whilst the hunt was on for a new director. Spielberg was momentarily intrigued by the Indianapolis idea but was contracted at Columbia for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977); whilst the original film’s production designer (Joe Alves) and editor (Verna Fields) proposed they act as co-directors, which was disallowed by the Directors Guild of America. Eventually, Jeannot Szwarc, who had cut his teeth on many of the same television series as Spielberg, was brought on as director.
One of the few coups pulled off by the sequel was the return of Roy Scheider as Chief Martin Brody. This itself only came about after Scheider quit The Deer Hunter (1978) two weeks before filming over creative differences. Scheider actually had a three-picture contract with Universal, one of which was to have been The Deer Hunter, but the studio would agree he could leave that film, and that they would consider the contract fulfilled in full, if he agreed to do Jaws 2. Tensions ran high between Szwarc and Scheider on set, but Jaws 2 was finally released in June of 1978.
Despite the marketing for the film managing to come up with one of the most famous taglines in film history (“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water ...”) contemporary reviews were mixed and remain so to this day. Praise is often directed towards the film’s action set pieces and Scheider’s performance; whilst criticisms are directed towards it being as much remake as sequel, showing too much of the mechanical shark, and for most of its cast of characters being teenagers existing to be killed off by the shark one by one. That last does oddly prefigure the forthcoming boom in slasher horror films, which would not cut their way into popular culture until Halloween (1978) a few months later.
Regardless of quality, the main thing for the studio was that Jaws 2 earned $78 million at the box office on a $20 million budget. The studio immediately began fishing for another sequel.
Zanuck and Brown once again signed on for another film. They might have realised that while one retread of the first film was lucky to have worked, to try it a third time would be chancing their luck. Instead, they looked to another 1978 Universal film for inspiration. This film had been Universal’s most successful of the year, earning $120 million at the box office, in the process becoming the third highest grossing film of 1978 after Grease and Superman, all from a mere $3 million budget: National Lampoon’s Animal House.
Thus, Zanuck and Brown pitched the second sequel as Jaws 3, People 0 and sought Matty Simmons, the publisher of National Lampoon who had also produced Animal House, to produce the second sequel. From a story outline by Simmons, National Lampoon writers Todd Carroll and John Hughes (himself later a prolific writer/director) were to script the film. Details of the proposed satirical film are vague, but it was to be involve the making of a killer shark film that runs afoul of an actual killer shark. Bo Derek and Richard Dreyfuss were slated to star, the latter returning from the first film (he passed on the first sequel because Spielberg was not directing), but apparently playing a fictionalised version of himself rather than Matt Hooper.
They even had a director in mind: Joe Dante. Dante had recently directed Piranha (1978), a Roger Corman produced cash-in on Jaws featuring another piscine menace running amok. Appropriately for Jaws 3, People 0, Piranha adopted a semi-comedic tone. Released opposite Jaws 2, Universal had originally intended to lodge an injunction against its release but were dissuaded by no less than Steven Spielberg. The director of Jaws would later call Piranha “the best of the Jaws ripoffs” and even produced multiple pictures directed by Dante through his Amblin Entertainment company.
It would also be Spielberg, however, who would spell the end for Jaws 3, People 0.
Per Simmons, Spielberg, still riding high off of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, bluntly threatened never to work with Universal again if the proceeded with making Jaws 3, People 0. The blame might not be entirely his, since there are also reports of disagreements between the producers and the studio over whether to pursue an R-rated film for adults or a PG-rated one for a more general audience. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before! What differs in this instance however is that it was the filmmakers pushing for PG whilst the studio would have preferred an R-rated picture.
Ultimately, Universal agreed with Spielberg that a parody of their most successful film, still the second-most successful film of all time (being dethroned for the top spot by Star Wars (1977)), would be shooting themselves in the foot. Universal still wanted a sequel, make no mistake there, they just didn’t really want to do anything off-piste from what had been done before. The production rights were bought from Zanuck and Brown by Alan Landsburg, whose prior producing experience was mostly on television Movies of the Week, and whose most famous efforts were on the paranormal investigation series In Search of… hosted by Leonard Nimoy. It is from Lansburg that the eventually used concept for the second sequel to Jaws emerged.
Although Guerdon Trueblood was credited for the story, this might have just been based on an idea he had which bore some superficial similarities to the idea of a great white shark swimming inland and becoming trapped to the Jaws 3 idea of a great white shark becoming trapped in a marine theme park. The idea also bore some similarities to Revenge of the Creature (1955), the first sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), which saw the titular monster captured and brought to a Florida oceanarium where he predictably runs amok.
Legendary science fiction author Richard Matheson was enlisted to write the first proper outline. Amongst the edicts faced by Matheson from the studio were that the protagonists be grown-up versions of Chief Brody’s sons from the first two films, which wound up in the film; that it be the same shark as was electrocuted at the end of Jaws 2, which did not wind up in the film; and that he write a part specifically tailored for the actor Mickey Rooney, who was never officially slated to appear in the film. Matheson’s script would be rewritten by a returning Carl Gottlieb, although he suspects that it passed through the hands of other script doctors. After missing out on co-directing Jaws 2, Joe Alves finally helmed his first feature-film with the second sequel. It was also his last. Matheson would ultimately blame Alves for how the film would turn out, along with its most infamous element: 3-D.
Jaws 3-D was released around the same time as Hollywood had revived the long-moribund technology. Other such films included Friday the 13th Part III (1982) and Amityville 3-D (1983). It is a nice coincidence that all these films happened to be the third entry in a film series, but beyond that the revival of the technology was simply Hollywood responding to a new technology that threatened their bottom line. Just as the 1950s introduction of 3D was meant to counter the emerging popularity of television, so was its 1980s revival intended to offset the introduction of home video. The gimmick worked, since Jaws 3-D was still enormously successful at the box office, earning $88 million from an $18 million budget. It was also met with overwhelmingly negative reviews, with much of the criticism directed towards the 3D effects, earning five Golden Raspberry Award nominations including Worst Picture. The film did mark an early leading role for Dennis Quaid, whose memories of the production are that he was high on cocaine during every frame he appears on camera.
It seemed the Jaws series couldn’t sink much lower. Then, Jaws: The Revenge (1987) was released. In the lead role was Lorraine Gary, the same wife of Universal CEO Sidney Sheinberg whom John D. Hancock and Jeannot Szwarc had balked at including her character in the thick of the action. Jaws: The Revenge ignored the events of Jaws 3-D, but what most people remember are the infamous roaring shark, improbably plot, poor special effects, and Michael Caine slumming it in a supporting role. Caine would later indicate he had never actually seen the film but had seen “the house it bought me.”
Would Michael Caine have been able to purchase said domicile had Jaws 3, People 0 been made instead of Jaws 3-D? How would Jaws have fared as a series if it had gone for laughs instead of an already dead gimmick?
Like many of the cases examined in this series, it might come down to a bit of bravery on behalf of studio executives. If we can suspend our disbelief enough to imagine such a thing was possible, then maybe we can see a pathway for Jaws 3, People 0 to make it to the cinema screens.
If indeed Spielberg threatened to never to work for Universal again if they pursued the project, which has been alleged by Simmons, then it is a question of whether he was bluffing and if Universal would call him on his bluff. Around the same time as he would have been making the threat in 1979, Spielberg actually saw the first major stutter on his pathway to directorial godhood. The war comedy 1941 (1979) was released in December to mixed reviews and was much less financially successful than his prior two efforts. Maybe if the idea can be held into 1980 someone at Universal might have enough chutzpah to say (however incorrectly, as it turned out) that Spielberg was no guarantee of success. Especially since Universal had the domestic distribution rights to 1941, his stutter had even impacted their bottom line, they had reasons to roll the dice.
There is still the issue of the filmmakers and Universal wanting different tones for the film. It was a shame the PG-13 rating would not be introduced until 1984 (actually at Spielberg’s behest for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that year), since it would have allowed them to split the difference. Some deviousness from the filmmakers could have helped there, filming the bloody version that Universal wanted on the understanding it could be cut later.
Jaws 3, People 0 would have several advantages over Jaws 3-D. It would have a producer fresh off a massively successful film. A director who had not only directed prior pictures but even directed one similar in some respects to the proposed film. Actors arguably at their height of their popularity in the shape of Bo Derek (whose breakthrough performance in 10 (1979) turned her into a sex symbol) and Richard Dreyfuss (who had recently won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Goodbye Girl (1977)).
If it was released in 1980, it would also have competition, but maybe even mutual cross-appeal, with Airplane! (1980). That film gave the same parodic treatment Jaws 3, People 0 wanted to give its parent films to the Airport franchise. The sequels to Airport (1970) had themselves gone through the same declining returns as the Jaws films did historically. Both Airport and Jaws had been based on novels, gone on to massive success in their original releases, and ushered in a slew of imitators. Airplane! would go on to become the fourth highest grossing film of 1980, earning $84 million from a $3.5 million budget. If the films don’t cancel each other out, they might actually help each other at the box office with those more interested in seeing Airplane! then giving Jaws 3, People 0 a chance and vice versa.
Airplane! also managed to kill not only the Airport series but also that subgenre of star-studded disaster films that the original entry had ushered in. Interest in natural horror films akin to Jaws was already waning by the time Jaws 3, People 0 would have been released, but if this aspect holds true then Jaws 3, People 0 could be the death knell for that subgenre. The idea that an idea could be run into the ground until it goes out in a satirical blaze of glory would then be a pattern. Amongst the other films from this era that introduced a slew of imitators are Star Wars, Halloween, Alien (1979), and Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Not that there weren’t similar efforts historically, Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs (1987) doing this mainly for Star Wars but also plenty of other science fiction films including Alien. With both Airplane! and Jaws 3, People 0 as examples, maybe Spaceballs gets made a few years earlier.
There is the small matter of Spielberg making good on his threat, which would preclude him making his later films for Universal like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jurassic Park (1993) and Lost World, Schindler’s List (1993), and his most recent efforts The Fabelmans (2022) and Disclosure Day (2026). He also might be less willing to work with Joe Dante, precluding him from directing Gremlins (1984), Innerspace (1987), and Small Soldiers (1998) for Amblin. That’s assuming not only that he meant what he allegedly said, but also that he’d hold a grudge over it for four-and-a-half decades.
Of course, if Jaws 3, People 0 is a success, then Universal could only want one thing: another Jaws film! Yes, even in this version of history, capitalism might lead us down a path that still ends in Jaws: The Revenge. However, that film would have an advantage in this timeline. With one self-parody already in the series, perhaps audiences think Jaws: The Revenge is one too? Late 1980s moviegoers reacting to Jaws: The Revenge the same way the audiences in Mel Brooks’ The Producers (1968) reacted to Springtime for Hitler aside, Jaws 3, People 0 would certainly have left a better legacy for the series than either Jaws 3-D or The Revenge.
However much it might have lambasted its predecessors in self-parody, going out laughing at itself is certainly a better fate than being a vehicle for a cheap gimmick like 3-D or producing one of the worst films of all time. How many other films might be impacted by it changing the relationship between a Hollywood studio and its most prominent wunderkind going into the decade he would help define? Depends on what one makes of the alleged threat.If you can’t laugh at yourself, how can you laugh at anybody else? Jaws 3, People 0 tried to laugh at itself, but some wouldn’t let it. Instead, everyone laughed at the films they made instead. Those weren’t comedies.
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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