Shark Night
Shark Night (advertised as Shark Night 3D) is a 2011 American horror film directed by David R. Ellis and written by Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg. It stars Sara Paxton, Chris Carmack, Katharine McPhee, Alyssa Diaz, Dustin Milligan, and Joel David Moore. The film, which was negatively received by critics and grossed $40 million worldwide, was released in Real D 3D and Digital 3D. This was Ellis's final film before his death.[2]
Shark Night
Will Hayes
Jesse Studenberg
Chris Briggs
Mike Fleiss
Lynette Howell
Gary Capo
- September 2, 2011 (United States)
90 minutes
United States
English
$25 million[1]
$41.4 million[1]
Production[edit]
Principal photography took place in the fall of 2010 in Louisiana around the Ark-La-Tex and at Caddo Lake in Uncertain, Texas.[3]
The sharks featured in the film were animatronic sharks built by Edge Innovations, who previously built sharks for movies such as Deep Blue Sea, Austin Powers in Goldmember, and even the Orca in Free Willy. According to Walt Conti, the head of Edge Innovations, two models for each shark were built, one "attacker" and one "swimmer", each of which required very different internal mechanisms. "Sharks are this total contrast of stealthy, cruising lurking and these intense bursts of power," Conti says. "We split those two behaviors into two different types of models, and optimized each to do one of those things best."[4]
Although the movie was always going to be titled Shark Night 3D overseas, Ellis fought for a name change for the North American release, at one point wanting to release the film under the title Untitled Shark Thriller 3D.[5] Bloody Disgusting would later compare the proposed title of the film to Ellis's previous film Snakes on a Plane (2006).[6]