The Origin of Spielberg’s Jaws: From Newspaper Article to Novel to Summer Blockbuster

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In essence, it’s accurate to say that without director Steven Spielberg, the idea of the summer blockbuster wouldn’t have been unveiled 50 years ago. Yet, the journey of the now iconic movie Jaws gaining worldwide acclaim actually started roughly a decade prior to Spielberg’s significant Hollywood success.

Let’s delve deeper into the beginnings of “Jaws”, from its humble start as a captivating news article, all the way up to becoming the pioneering summer box office hit.

The newspaper article that inspired Peter Benchley to write Jaws

The story that became famous as a shark saga started in 1964. At this time, Peter Benchley, who was then a reporter and later a novelist, was inspired by an article about Frank Mundus, a fisherman who had caught a massive great white shark over two tons near Montauk, New York’s coast. This event added to Benchley’s memories from his childhood when he used to catch sharks with his father during fishing trips on Nantucket.

In 1971, Peter Benchley sold his debut work of fiction, a novel about a peaceful coastal town plagued by a monstrous deep-sea predator, to Doubleday. As revealed in Laurent Bouzereau’s upcoming documentary Jaws @ 50, the author experimented with various potential titles such as Leviathan Rising and Terror of the Deep. The book was released in 1974 and quickly captivated readers, maintaining its spot on bestseller lists for nearly a year.

According to Andrew C.J. Bergman of The New York Times, “Jaws” maintains an engaging rhythm and offers smooth entertainment.

In New York magazine, Eliot Fremont-Smith expressed that Benchley’s work progresses well, meeting all anticipations. He adds the right amount of civic and environmental information to make us feel content, and concludes with an exceptional and chilling fight scene.

How Jaws went from a bestselling novel to a blockbuster movie

With high anticipation for the book’s movie potential, Hollywood producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown swiftly secured the film rights before it was even published. This same scenario repeated itself two decades later when a powerful Steven Spielberg acquired Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park rights prior to its publication.

During the final stages of post-production for his first feature film, “The Sugarland Express,” a young Spielberg stumbled upon an early copy of Benchley’s book in Zanuck’s office and devoured it over one weekend. He was immediately captivated, viewing “Jaws” as a fitting counterpart to his television movie “Duel,” where a man (Dennis Weaver) is tormented by a truck, with the driver remaining unseen. Keen on taking on this project, the budding director was met with resistance, as producers had someone else in mind for the role, Dick Richards (of “The Culpepper Cattle Co.”), who was eventually rejected when he persistently referred to the shark as a whale.

Initially, Zanuck and Brown assigned the task to Spielberg, a move that would later become a significant milestone in cinematic history. The movie that emerged, largely attributed to Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, had several elements altered from the original material due to contributions from Howard Sackler, Matthew Robbins, John Milius, and Robert Shaw. Among these changes were the omission of an affair between Hooper and Brody’s wife, the concealment of Mayor Vaughn’s debts to local gangsters, and modifications in the climactic fight with the shark itself.

Regardless of a challenging production process that pushed the movie past its original schedule and budget, the off-camera difficulties associated with Jaws were not evident when it premiered in theaters on June 20, 1975, under Universal Pictures. The film quickly resonated with audiences, earning the title of highest-grossing release until Star Wars broke the box office record two years later.

As I delved into Benchley’s book, I couldn’t help but feel the wave of its runaway success washing over me. It catapulted Spielberg into the big leagues as a powerhouse talent in our industry, and opened up a whole new era of studio thinking. But there was one drawback to this blockbuster hit: it tainted the public’s view of great white sharks, unfortunately.

In a conversation with Time magazine back in 2001 (as reported by CBS News), Peter Benchley stated he couldn’t write “Jaws” again. He explained that it was once thought that great white sharks intentionally targeted humans, but now we understand that such attacks are typically unintentional mistakes.

In 2022, Spielberg expressed a lingering concern not about being personally attacked by a shark, but about the possibility that sharks might still hold a grudge against him due to the excessive sport fishing that took place after 1975, which he feels contributed significantly to the decline of shark populations. To this day, he deeply regrets the impact his book and film had on these marine creatures.

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2025-06-06 23:32