A 75-foot prehistoric shark, Jason Statham in a wetsuit and a director who knows exactly how silly all of this is — The Meg is streaming on HBO Max, and it brought its sequel along. As Polygon noted on September 27, 2026, both the 2018 original and Meg 2: The Trench are available to stream on the service, which makes for a ready-made weekend double feature.
The first film runs 113 minutes and opened in the US on August 10, 2018. It was directed by Jon Turteltaub, best known for National Treasure, and is based on Steve Alten’s 1997 novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror. Warner Bros. Pictures handled US distribution, while Gravity Pictures released it in China.
The setup
Statham plays Jonas Taylor, a highly skilled rescue diver who has withdrawn from the world after a mission went badly wrong. He is pulled back into action when his ex-wife ends up trapped in an underwater lab in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. The rescue works — but it also lets a megalodon, a giant shark species believed to be extinct, escape into open water. From there, Jonas and the crew of the Mana One research facility are left to hunt the creature down.
The supporting cast includes Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao and Cliff Curtis.
Why it works
Polygon’s case for the film is simple: it does not try to beat Jaws at its own game. Spielberg’s 1975 classic is still the benchmark for shark cinema, and The Meg sidesteps the comparison by leaning into spectacle. Its shark is roughly three times the size of the great white from Jaws, the body count is almost cartoonish, and the crew tries one scheme after another to stop the beast. The result plays less like a rival and more like an affectionate, slightly parodic riff — ridiculous, but played straight enough that it never slides into Sharknado territory.
Statham is the other key ingredient. His early career included Guy Ritchie comedies such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, and here he dials his usual steely action persona up a notch — the stares last a beat longer, the calm is even more unshakable. Statham has himself described the film as a fun popcorn movie, which is exactly how it lands.
By the numbers
- Running time: 113 minutes
- Budget: $130–178 million
- Worldwide box office: $529 million
- Sequel: Meg 2: The Trench, directed by Ben Wheatley, released August 4, 2023
Make it a double bill
If the first film leaves you wanting more, the sequel is right there on the same service. Meg 2: The Trench goes even bigger, with more megalodons, more carnage and, as Polygon puts it, even more “Stathamocity.” Neither film asks much of its audience, and that is the point: two loud, cheerful monster movies built for a lazy weekend on the couch.
