Hello!

Deep in the lists of ‘Movies That Never Were’ rests the odd tale of the second sequel to Spielberg’s  Jaws. It ended up being a cookie-cutter franchise place-holder, but decked out in fancy 3-D … but only after another idea spent some time in pre-production. For a while the 2nd sequel was envisioned as a hot comedy take on the huge summer hit, a collaboration between Zanuck/Brown and National Lampoon.

Joey Paur’s website ‘geek tyrant’ gives us a rundown of the story, evidently lifted from a 2023 documentary called Sharksploitation. The nutty comedy project picked up some momentum before it was suddenly cancelled, a common fate for movies in development. Besides producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown, the lineup of conspirators left on the beach included the Lampoon’s Matty Simmons, writers Tod Carroll & John Hughes, plus director Joe Dante.

I’d say more info is needed … was there ever a script?  Joe Dante could have made the show into a Mad Mad World of crazy comedy … but might he have become typed as an ‘auteur director of fish?’  Paur ends by saying Universal should dust off Matty Simmons’ gory R-rated version and produce it now … except they’d probably have to rough it up just to get a PG.

We love Betty Boop … we loved her even when she had ears like a Basset Hound. Joe Dante forwarded this half-hour attempt to revive the famous character, in the form of an animated TV special.

Other Dave Fleischer characters are involved too, including Bosko and Koko the Clown. Experts would probably have more to say about shortcuts in the show’s animation, but all we saw was some hula dancing that looked to be rotoscoped from an original cartoon.

The show is a curiosity that apparently didn’t develop any further … it’s busy and noisy but the attempt to replicate the original style feels crude, and the laughs aren’t there, either. It reminds us that the original cartoons were made for adult audiences, not children. Randall Cyrenne at Animated Views had a little more information on the show, from 2003.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson