Jaws 2 (1978) on Netflix
After a great white shark terrorized Amity Island, scuba divers and a water skier are attacked in its waters. Police Chief Martin Brody suspects a second shark is hunting there.
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Trailer
Plot summary
The small island resort town of Amity is trying to bounce back from the financial troubles that suffered after becoming known as the site of shark attacks four years earlier. Mayor Larry Vaughn is welcoming developer Len Peterson and his new resort to Amity. Two scuba divers are exploring the area where the Orca sank after police chief Martin Brody killed a huge shark four years ago. A shark shows up and devoured the two divers, but not before one of the divers takes a close-up picture of the shark's eye, and sometime later, while a mother is driving a boat that's pulling her water-skiing teenage daughter, the shark devours the daughter and causes the mother to accidentally blow up the boat, then a killer whale is found on the shore with a huge bites on it. After Brody sees this, he knows there's another huge great white shark in Amity's waters, but Vaughn and Peterson explain these attacks away as non-shark accidents, because the thought of another shark in Amity's waters would drive tourists away from the new resort and cause the new resort to lose money. It looks like Vaughn is still a mayor who puts money ahead of people's lives. Brody tips his gun's hollow point bullets with cyanide and melted candle wax and tells his sons Michael and Sean to stay away from the beaches and told them to not go sailing with Mike's friends, who include Vaughn's son Larry Vaughn Jr. Everyone thinks Brody's fears are shark trauma-induced paranoia.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Jaws 2 (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Steven Spielberg refused to direct Jaws 2, publicly calling sequel-making "a cheap carny trick" and not even replying when the producers asked him.
- Roy Scheider only returned as Martin Brody to settle a contract dispute: he had quit The Deer Hunter two weeks before filming, and Universal agreed to forgive the breach if he appeared in Jaws 2 instead.
- The new mechanical sharks built for the sequel were officially called "Bruce Two" after the original film's "Bruce" (itself named for Spielberg's lawyer), but crew members nicknamed the individual props "Fidel" and "Harold", the latter after producer David Brown's Beverly Hills lawyer.
- The floating barge built to represent Cable Junction Island broke loose from its moorings during filming and had to be rescued after director Jeannot Szwarc was told his set was drifting toward Cuba.
- Jaws 2's opening weekend gross of $9,866,023 across 640 theaters set the record for the highest-grossing opening weekend ever up to that point, plus a single-day record of $3.5 million, even though Grease opened the very same weekend.
- Jaws 2 briefly held the title of highest-grossing sequel in movie history, a record it kept only until Rocky II arrived the following year.
- At $30 million, Jaws 2 cost more than three times what the original film did; producer David Brown said Universal never would have greenlit such a budget outright, and the on-location Marine Division head put the daily cost at about $80,000.
