CHUD Spawned ‘Meg’ Finds Way to New Line
Online entrepreneur gets things rolling on adaptation.
It has been long known that Nick Nunziata, editor and founder of fan site Chud.com, had been insistent on the possibility of turning Steve Alten’s shark horror “Meg” into a feature film adaptation, and now it seems that dream has become a reality.
The story of an 80-foot-long prehistoric shark — scientifically known as Carcharodon megalodon and believed by some to be an ancestor of the great white shark — which terrorizes the California coast is set to go over at New Line Cinema with Jan de Bont aboard to direct.
Not only that, but the project is being put on the fast track. Negotiations were going around in circles until de Bont and producers built a model of the shark that impressed studio execs.
The film came to be as the original rights to the story were bought by Disney for north of $1 million after it came out in 1997 but the option soon expired and Alten then wrote his own script and got in touch with Nunziata during an interview. Nunziata passed the screenplay along to Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro, who agreed to produce and brought on his Hellboy partners Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin. Also joining the producers bench are Ken Atchity and Chi-Li Wong.
Currently Shane Salerno is re-writing Alten’s script. Casting will start once the rewrite is complete and production is expected to get underway in the fall.
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