18. The Shark Was Massive
Photo: pinterest
The shark being massive shouldn’t come as a shock if you’ve seen the movie. That was sort of the point actually. Not only was the shark massive on screen, but the rig for the mechanical shark was even bigger. Production designer, Joe Alves built the pneumatically-powered shark and the rig that supported it. In total, the entire contraption measured 25 feet long and weighed in at a staggering 12 tons! The size of the rig was part of the reason Martha’s Vineyard was chosen as the shooting location due to its fairly shallow water depth for the scenes in which the shark rig needed to rest on the ocean floor.
17. Jaws Almost Wasn’t Jaws
Photo: mentalfloss
As many of you already know, the film was based on the best-selling novel written by Peter Brenchley. But did you know that Brenchley originally had other titles in mind for his book and only changed it to “Jaws” at the last minute? The book was based on a combination of two events, a New York fisherman that caught a 4,500lb shark off the coast of Montauk in 1964, and a series of shark attacks that wreaked havoc on the New Jersey coastline in 1916. Some of the titles he had in mind were “Leviathan Rising,” “The Silence of the Deep,” and “The Stillness in the Water.”