Eli Roth Exits ‘Meg’ and Jon Turteltaub Slowly Moves In

During last summer it was announced that director Eli Roth would take his bloody sensibilities to the high seas with a big-budget creature feature shark film based on the novel “Meg.” Well now it seems like the director has slipped away from the project and a new name is moving in.

Deadline is reporting that director Eli Roth has left the big screen adaptation of “Meg” and that director Jon Turteltaub may soon take his place.  It’s not known exactly why Roth left the project, but I’ve seen some rumors suggesting that it was possibly due to budget concerns.  While I’m not a huge Eli Roth fan, I still would’ve liked to have seen his take on the shark genre, especially with a big-budget flick like “Meg.”

Turteltaub is an interesting replacement as his films tend to be action-adventure family films like “National Treasure”, “Cool Runnings”, and (my personal favorite) “3 Ninjas.”  But if Warner Bros. is aiming to capture the same kind of spark that “Jurassic World” had, I could see why they would go for a director like this.

“Meg”, based on a novel by Steve Alten, will follow the hunt for a giant Megalodon shark that is terrorizing the coast of China.  Hopefully we’ll be hearing more about this one as Turteltaub settles into the director’s chair.