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Jason Statham Promises No ‘Fisticuffs’ With A Megalodon In His Upcoming ‘Meg’

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 01:01 PST, Jan 4, 2017

Jason Statham is an English actor, former model, and competitive diver. Today, Statham has become a popular action hero, featuring in action-thrillers like The Transporter Trilogy, The Expendables, Crank, War, The Bank Job, Death Race, and Furious 7.

Jason Statham is one of the rare actors who performs all his own stunts and combat scenes in movies, and it’s partly because of this that the Death Race actor has become the preferred choice for many directors of action-thrillers.

Jason Statham will appear in Fast 8, a movie to be released in 2017.

Before venturing into Hollywood’s film industry, Statham was a successful model; however, before he started modeling, Statham had been an expert diver for more than a decade with the National Diving Squad. In fact, Statham’s diving career helped him get into show business because he was spotted by a sports modeling agency when training at London’s National Sports Centre.

Now, Statham will bring his diving skills to the big screen because the Mechanic actor will be playing the role of Jonas Taylor, a U.S. Navy deep-sea diver, who’ll be confronting a prehistoric shark-like creature in the upcoming film Meg. The upcoming movie is based on Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, a science fiction novel by Steve Alten. The book’s title refers to the Megalodon, the deep-sea creature who terrorizes everything in the ocean.

Since 1997 there have been a number of attempts to produce a movie based on this particular novel, but all efforts have been thwarted because of development issues. Slash Film reports that Warner Brothers decided to produce the film only after actor Jason Statham, director Jon Turteltaub, and a Chinese financing company showed interest in the film project.

Jason Statham will be featuring with Li Bingbing, a Chinese actress is set to play Suyin, an expert oceanographer’s daughter working alongside Statham’s character to hunt the prehistoric marine creature.

The movie’s synopsis reveals that Suyin’s oceanographer father seeks Jonas Taylor’s help to hunt and kill the 75-foot-long Megalodon. The plot further reveals that the terrifying prehistoric sea-creature is not new to Jonas because he has already confronted the Megalodon in the past. The movie is set to be adventurous and thrilling, and audiences will be interested to see how Statham’s Jonas Taylor takes on the menacing Megalodon.

Given Jason Statham’s reputation as an action hero, it seems that many fans were hoping to see Statham’s character punching the Megalodon in the face in the new movie. Unfortunately, though, the New Zealand Herald reports that the actor specifically addressed the question of getting into “fisticuffs” with the creature.

“There are no fisticuffs with a megalodon.”

Den of Geek reports that the film is currently being shot in New Zealand.

Few images have been released from the set thus far, though Jason Statham himself has given a few clues away with his Instagram posts over the past few months.

Statham’s upcoming movie is reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws in which a killer shark terrorizes beachgoers on an island. However, the Megalodon did exist in prehistoric times and fossils of this creature are on display in the American Museum of Natural History.

Most movies depicting confrontation between humans and prehistoric creatures are intended to be scary, and it’s expected that Jason Statham’s movie could well cause nightmares. Jurassic Park, another Spielberg movie, is the perfect example of how prehistoric creatures can give viewers sleepless nights.

Now, with a genuine action hero like Jason Statham featuring as the hero, fans will surely be lining up at the box office. In fact, many people are very excited about the upcoming movie and polls are being conducted to determine the public’s general perception regarding Megalodons. According to Movie Pilot, a survey was carried out to check whether people believed in the present-day existence of Megalodons. Surprisingly, 53 percent of respondents believe that Megalodons still haunt the depths of the oceans.

[Featured Image by Christopher Polk/Getty Images]

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