On this day in 1975, Jaws splashed onto the big screen — and nothing about beach vacations was ever quite the same. Steven Spielberg's masterful thriller, centered on an enormous, ferociously aggressive white shark tormenting visitors at a New England coastal resort, managed to instill a fear of the water in audiences unlike anything before or since.
Think you know everything about this iconic film? Here are some fun facts that might surprise you.
Fun Facts:
- Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts served as the filming location for the movie.
- Jaws held the record as the highest-grossing motion picture in film history until Star Wars knocked it from the top spot in 1977.
- The film hit theaters on June 20, 1975, but the story had already captivated readers. Peter Benchley's 1974 novel of the same name provided the source material for the movie.
- With a production budget of $9 million, the film went on to rake in over $470 million at the box office.
- The mechanical shark built for filming earned the nickname "Bruce" — a nod to Spielberg's lawyer.
- Despite the entire plot revolving around shark attacks, the fearsome creature doesn't actually show up on screen until one hour and 21 minutes into the film.
- That legendary line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" was never in the script. It originated as a running joke on set whenever problems arose. Roy Scheider worked the phrase into several moments during filming, but it landed with particular perfection in the scene everyone remembers.
- Spielberg spent much of production fearing that the ballooning timeline and budget overruns would destroy his career as a director. As it turned out, he couldn't have been more wrong!