Hollywood action star Jason Statham went diving with bull sharks to prepare for his role in the latest summer blockbuster “The Meg.”
The film tells the story of a research team trapped at the bottom of the pacific ocean, who are being hunted by a not-so-extinct 22m/~75ft Megalodon shark.
Statham told Total Film:
“I thought I’d better figure out what it’s like to go face-face-with a shark before we did this film, so I went scuba diving. . . . We took a trip to Fiji. They hand-feed these bull sharks with tuna heads and then the sharks circle around, and you line up behind this coral wall. . . . You’re within two feet of these three-meter sharks. It was a great experience.”
Discussing his scuba diving experience, Statham, who was a competitive swimmer in his youth and represented England at the Commonwealth Games, told Total Film:
“I’ve been around swimming pools my whole life, and I learned to scuba dive when I made the first ‘Transporter’ with Luc Besson. I really got hooked.”
You can check out the trailer for “The Meg” below, as well as a video on how the filmmakers shot the underwater scenes.
(Top image credit: Warner Bros.)
