The Meg franchise is an exciting creature drama that brought a lot of audiences to theaters. Around mid-2023, the franchise did look like it was heading toward a threequel, with the director of Meg 2: The Trench (2023), Ben Wheatley, being openly optimistic about it. However, recent updates from Wheatley are unlikely to inspire much hope among fans of the franchise.
Ben Wheatley unsure about Meg’s future
In an interview with The Direct, the director of the Meg sequel was reminded of his past remarks, where he stated that a third film was in order if the sequel succeeded. Now that the sequel generated a decent revenue of $398.5 million worldwide, the interviewer asked if there were any developments regarding the third installment.
Delivering a cheeky response, Wheatley said, “I don’t know. I think that… I’m sure the Meg itself, it’s out there swimming. There’s a massive, dark shadow in the sea. But I don’t know what’s going on [with a third movie].”
Safe to say, the studio hasn’t greenlighted his project, but still, the interviewer prodded him about what the rough idea for the potential third film would be about if it were given the go-ahead. “Yeah, well, what I want to do is have The Meg being researched for military purposes, and it gets up on land, on with legs (laughs),” the filmmaker joked.
Wheatley had earlier stated that there was “a lot more to explore” in that world, with the creative team actively having discussions about expanding the franchise. But based on his recent comments, the future doesn’t look so bright for Meg fans. Meg 2: The Trench, which did decent box office numbers, but couldn’t replicate the success of its predecessor, The Meg, which earned $529.2 million worldwide in ticket sales.
As per media reports, the sequel didn’t perform well domestically compared to its previous iteration.
Furthermore, the availability of the main protagonist of the film, Jason Statham, is also up in the air, as he is involved in several projects and his schedule is jam-packed. His packed slate includes Expendables, The Beekeeper, and A Working Man for this year, and not to mention his role as a producer in some of these films makes his schedule even busier. For the time being, it looks highly unlikely that the project will take off. But, then again, you can never say never.
