More casting news has come in for Meg as Variety is reporting that Chinese actress Li Bingbing (the Resident Evil franchise) is in final talks to star opposite Jason Statham and Jessica McNamee in Warner Bros.’ upcoming prehistoric shark tentpole.
Meg is set for a March 2, 2018, release. The story is based on Steve Alten’s novel MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror, published in 1997, in which the ancient Megalodon species is discovered to have survived in the Mariana Trench due to a barrier of cold water.
Jon Turteltaub’s Meg centers on an international underwater observation program, led by Chinese scientists, which comes under attack with its deep-sea submersible disabled and trapped at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Jason Statham will portray a former naval captain, who’s recruited even though he faced the predator years before and was forced him to abort his mission and abandon half his crew. Rainn Wilson will play Jack Morris, a tech billionaire who funds an underwater observation program that unwittingly unleashes the Carcharodon megalodon – a 70-foot, 40-ton prehistoric cousin of the great white.