‘Jaws’ Reboot Pitched By Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith is interested in rebooting the Jaws franchise and he has even figured out his pitch to propose to Steven Spielberg, if he’s called upon to launch it.

During his chat with Wall Street Journal, the Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma and Tusk director, revealed his unique idea behind how Amity Island can become scary once again.

“You set it in the present, and you use a hurricane, and you flood the town. Then the shark is in the town. Not just in the water. Because, again, on the land you’re fine. But all that imagery from Hurricane Sandy, of houses underwater — add a great white shark. There’s your Jaws, modern-day Jaws. Because then you gotta be on a rooftop. A shark could come into your house, dude.”

Smith, who cites Jaws as one of his favorite films, said that only Spielberg could direct the blockbuster though. He even declared that if the legendary filmmaker, who has overseen the likes of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Lincoln, and Raiders Of The Lost Ark, does make a new Jaws film then he will immediately retire from filmmaking.

“You know how to get me to quit filmmaking? Steven Spielberg comes back and makes another Jaws, I will lay down my director cap, my beret, if you will. That’s a closed circle for me. That’s the man that captured my imagination in the first place, sitting in a drive-in, watching Jaws from the backseat of my parents’ Ford and being terrified.”

Smith even stated that he has his own plan to make his own remake of Jaws, but the indie filmmaker made sure that he confirmed it would be “as close as [he] can get without being sued, of course, by Universal.” Moose Jaws, as he revealed the film would be called, would replace Bruce the Shark with a man-eating moose.

Throughout Smith’s back catalogue there have been several references to Jaws. In Mallrats, his 1995 follow-up to Clerks, two characters named Quint and Brody were featured, which was a clear tip of the hat to who Robert Shaw and Roy Schneider played in Spielberg’s original. Plus, in Chasing Amy, there’s also an homage to the scar-comparison scene between Joey-Lauren Adams and Ben Affleck’s characters, which the leading trio undertake on the boat in Jaws as they wait for the shark to reveal itself.

What do you think of Kevin Smith’s Jaws idea? Do you think it would work?