My marketing recap column at The Hollywood Reporter for The Meg is basically one long exercise in not making a Jaws reference every other sentence and you should check that out. At the same time, admire how star Jason Statham isn’t even trying anymore, he’s just going to lean back and have a bit of fun in a bunch of nonsense action/adventure movies, something he seems well-suited for.
Online and Social
The official website for The Meg opens with the trailer, which you can watch again if you’re looking for some cheesy fun. After it plays, the splash page has full-motion video and prompts to buy tickets in all the preferred theatrical formats.
Moving to the top menu bar, “Trailer” and “Synopsis” are pretty standard while “Soundtrack” will take you to where you can stream or purchase the album.
There were also official GIFs available on a Tenor page.
Media and Publicity
Author Steve Alten shared how he wrote the original book and how it’s been sitting in various stages of development in Hollywood for 20 years, give or take. Shortly after that director Jon Turteltaub talked about making the movie and what it was like working on an international co-production as well as the inevitable comparisons to that *other* shark movie.
More here on how the movie has taken a 20-year, fan-fueled journey from the page to the screen.
Setting a land-speed record, star Jason Statham threw the movie under the bus before the movie even hit theaters, saying what wound up coming to theaters wasn’t the gory, horror-themed story he signed up for. That may help explain why he was largely absent from the publicity circuit, while Rainn Wilson and others showed up on late night shows and elsewhere.
IMAX created a short promo for the movie that seems just as over-the-top as what’s come before.
Overall
Yeah, this pretty well sums it up:
PICKING UP THE SPARE
Director Jon Turteltaub and others shared how they wanted to make a fun, exciting and pulse-pounding shark movie. Meanwhile, star Jason Statham continues to complain about how difficult the set was and how this wasn’t the movie he thought he’d be in.
Deadline hits many of the points I already covered when discussing the movie’s marketing but adds a few quotes from studio executives as well.
The details of Intel’s promotional partnership with the movie wasn’t clear in advance of release, but there have been more details that have come out since then about how the company contributed to the AI that helped power the digital shark.
Cinematic Slant 
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