The Meg 2 Confirmed Release Date Status, Cast, Plot, Trailer & Everything We Know in 2022!

By Jason Robinson Last updated Feb 27, 2022 0

You heard it here first, folks: the most ridiculous summer smash of 2018 is getting a sequel, which, let’s be honest, shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. The Meg was an undeniable success at the box office, grossing more than $530 million in total worldwide.

However, while critics were less enthusiastic about the shark thriller, most big-budget action movies now get sequels if they do well at the box office. Catherine Xujun Ying, the executive producer of The Meg 2: The Trench, announced in October 2018 that the film was in the early stages of development.

However, a great deal has occurred in the intervening two and a half years. We have some information about The Meg 2: The Trench, including what we can expect and when it will be released.

About Meg 2

Meg 2: The Trench is the follow-up to 2018’s The Meg, which saw Statham and a team of scientists battle a Megalodon, also known as a giant shark, in a submerged cave system. While the plot of the sequel is being kept under wraps for the time being, one can only hope that it will involve battling an even bigger shark. Wu, of course, will be appearing in the new film alongside Statham, as well as the previously announced cast members Sienna Guillory, Skyler Samuels, and Sergio Peris-Mencheta. Unfortunately, Variety has also reported that Li Bingbing, another well-known Chinese performer who appeared in the first film, will not be returning for the sequel. This is a disappointment.

However, whereas Jon Turteltaub directed the first film, which was followed by such fan-favorite films as the National Hero series and Cool Runnings, the directing chair for the sequel has indeed been handed over to Ben Wheatley, who has previously focused on films like Free Fire. Dean Georgaris, Erich Hoeber, and Jon Hoeber, the writers of the first film, will return to pen the script for this sequel, which will feature characters created by Steve Alten, the author of the novel on which The Meg was based.

The Meg 2 Confirmed Release Date

A release date for Meg 2 has not yet been announced, although it is reasonable to assume that it will be close to the one set for the first film.

The Meg was stuck in limbo for more than a decade, bouncing from one studio to another. In 2015, it was picked up by Warner Bros., and the final decision to hire Jon Turteltaub as director came in March 2016, after Hostel’s Eli Roth withdrew due to creative differences with the studio. The Meg was released in theatres in August 2018, two years and four months after the first film.

Ben Wheatley, who is coming off the success of his mystery drama Rebecca, has been cast to direct Meg 2, which will premiere in October 2020. The production and release of Meg 2 should follow a similar path to that of its predecessor, putting it in a prime position to hit theatres in the summer of 2023. The sequel could potentially be ready for release as early as 2023 or even as late as 2022, but an action film featuring (potentially) impossibly large sharks has the makings of a summer blockbuster written all over it.

The Meg 2 Cast

Meg 2 has yet to be officially announced, but based on what we’ve learned so far, there are some reasonable speculations about who will star in the sequel.

The most certain thing is that Jason Statham will reprise his role as the hero, Jonas Taylor. THR also stated that Statham was expected to return and that he would be “creatively involved” in their October 2020 report about Ben Wheatley being chosen as director. The actress Li Bingbing, whose character Suyin develops a strong romantic bond with Taylor, is also a lock for the role. The actor’s Page Kennedy and Ruby Rose, who played members of Taylor’s only surviving crew, may also be able to find their way back to the island.

Sophia Cai, who portrays Suyin’s daughter Meiying in The Meg, is one person who might raise some eyebrows. Cai celebrated his tenth birthday the same month The Meg premiered in theatres. Recasting an actor who is still in his twenties is common for a variety of reasons, particularly if the amount of time that is supposed to have passed between a film and its sequel does not correspond to the actor’s chronological age.

The Meg 2 Plot

Meg 2: The Trench has received little in the way of story details, though the title alone gives us a few hints as to what we can expect.

Author Steve Alten expressed his hope that the sequel to The Meg would be based on the second novel in his book series, The Trench, in a newsletter published in September 2018. Alten wrote that one of the reasons the sequels to Jaws failed to live up to the original was that “Peter Benchley only wrote one Jaws novel,” which was the first in the series. The fact that the sequel to The Meg will reportedly be titled Meg 2: The Trench suggests that the screenwriters agreed with him is a pretty strong indication that they did.

However, there are some significant differences between The Meg and the source material that make the idea of making a movie based on The Trench difficult to contemplate at this time. Angel is the monster shark featured in the novel; she is the larger and deadlier offspring of the megalodon that Taylor and his team battled in the first book. As they continue their search for Angel, the heroes come across members of another ancient species that was thought to be extinct — the Kronosaurus — who is alive and well in the Mariana Trench. Despite the fact that they are not as large as the megalodons, the Kronos have adapted to hunting in groups.

While Taylor’s crew captures the young megalodon Angel after killing its mother in Alten’s Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, this scene is absent from The Meg. This is a significant flaw in the story. That’s not to mention that Taylor is a marine biologist and paleontologist in the books, whereas his role in the movie was changed to that of a rescue diver, which means he would have less interest in studying a creature like Angel in the film.

As a result, it’s clear that Meg 2: The Trench will have to diverge from the source material at least as much as its predecessor; we’ll have to wait a little longer to find out exactly how much.

The Meg 2 Trailer

Given that the storyboarding is still in its early stages, we’re still a long way away from seeing a trailer. However, keep an eye on this space for any and all updates regarding The Meg 2!