The Meg is a movie about a giant shark terrorizing people, and you’d think that a movie about a giant shark terrorizing people would be Rated-R. That’s not the case for this movie, though – but we can’t lie and say we’re not still excited for the movie. What some might be interested to know, however, is that we could have had an R-Rated cut of the film.
While speaking to Bloody-Disgusting, director Jon Turteltaub revealed some interesting details (and made a reference to the site’s name) about scenes that were shot – but ultimately didn’t make the final cut:
“…I am so disappointed the film wasn’t more bloody or disgusting. My wife is glad about it and I’m glad my kids can see the movie, but the number of really horrifying, disgusting and bloody deaths we had lined up that we didn’t get to do is tragic. There was some really good shit that didn’t survive to the final cut.”
He continued:
“We shot or even did a lot of visual effects for [gory scenes]. We just realized there’s no way we’re keeping this PG-13 if we show this. It’s too fun a movie to not let people who don’t like blood and people who are under, say, 14 years old into the theater. I was very hesitant to cut out a lot of blood and gore. I wouldn’t have if I thought it was wrecking the story but it wasn’t. It still looked okay. I’ll sit down privately with your audience and take them through some really nasty shit.”
Before adding:
“The problem nowadays with those unrated DVDs is you used to have a bunch of scenes that were easy to either shoot or leave on the cutting room floor. Now to finish a scene costs millions in VFX. No one’s going to be spending millions of dollars just to have a little extra bonus footage.”
He did detail one gory scene:
“I don’t want to spoil too much but there was a death in the movie of one of the leading characters where you thought he was still alive and you realized it was only his head. Then the reveal that that was all that was left was awesome, but needless to say quite a few people told us it was creepy and I had to cut it.”
He finished by saying you shouldn’t worry too much about the dog we see floating around in the trailer:
“All I can say is anyone who knows anything about movies knows that you can kill 10,000 people and the audience doesn’t care, but you harm one dog and everyone writes a letter. While shooting, we went through about 15 dogs. That’s just a joke.”
Early reactions for the film have been positive, and the film should still be a pretty fun and interesting watch, regardless of the rating.
The Meg stars Jason Statham and hits theaters everywhere on August 10th.
What do you think of this news? Would you like to see an R-Rated cut of the movie? Be sure to tell us your thoughts in the comments down below!