How Deep Blue Sea's Director Really Feels About The Movie's Sequels

You might think of "Jaws" as soon as killer sharks are mentioned, but Renny Harlin's "Deep Blue Sea" brings a distinct variety to the genre. A b-movie classic through and through, the film flits between suspenseful thriller and satirical parody while delivering exactly what it promises. The premise itself is a tad ridiculous: shark-obsessed scientists have devised a way to extract shark brain issue to cure Alzheimer's, but these deep-sea creatures are most interested in turning folks into dinner. And oh, these sharks are more intelligent than you think, perfectly capable of memorizing the layout of human bases and luring victims to chomp on. The rest is exciting and hilarious, which is enough for "Deep Blue Sea" to rise above similar genre entries.

Is Harlin interested in making a "Deep Blue Sea" sequel? Not really, even though his 1999 shark flick has been succeeded by two direct-to-video sequels that he wasn't personally involved with. While these sequels cannot be considered compelling in the conventional sense of the term, they deliver on the shark carnage aspect through a schlocky lens. According to an interview in the October 2025 issue of SFX Magazine, Harlin doesn't seem to care too much about these stories:

"They already did sort of like rip-off versions. I've never seen any of them, but they felt very low-budget and so and so. I think they kind of... I don't know, it felt like they sold it cheap. So I'm done with it."

This is understandable, as Harlin's film is a sincere exploration of the shark attack genre, boasting some amount of technical artistry despite firmly planting itself in schlock territory. That said, Harlin seems enthused about his next big sea-focused project — "Deep Water," which promises more bombastic shark action than anything he's made before.

Harlin's upcoming "Deep Water" (not to be confused with the eponymous erotic thriller(ish) starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas) revolves around a group of passengers en route from LA to Shanghai who are forced to land in shark-infested waters. This is obviously a recipe for disaster, as the survivors must find a way to get to safety without being devoured by the sharks drawn to the wreckage. In the same interview, the director talks about "the biggest airplane crash sequence ever filmed" in an attempt to convey the scale of the genre flick in the vein of '70s disaster movies (like "The Towering Inferno" or "Earthquake"):

"It's a very big, epic movie – a callback to 1970s disaster movies. It's like my 'Poseidon Adventure,' but with a plane in the ocean. The survivors think they are lucky until they realise that they are surrounded by sharks, and then it becomes kind of like the USS Indianapolis story in 'Jaws'. It's a very big canvas with a big cast of characters, and it's very emotional [...] I honestly think it's a very good movie. I'm tremendously excited."

The film does boast a big cast of characters, featuring the likes of Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Angus Sampson, Kelly Gale, and Madeleine West, among others. If "Deep Water" is anything like "Deep Blue Sea," there's hope for exciting shenanigans that are both emotion-driven and spectacle-heavy (where the tone can still retain a kernel of tongue-in-cheek levity). Hopefully, this upcoming shark extravaganza will be less dull than Harlin's recently released "The Strangers – Chapter 2," which falls victim to hackneyed genre tropes and fails to justify its existence.