Killer Shark Movie MEG Might Replace Eli Roth with NATIONAL TREASURE Director

There are a handful of killer shark movies in the works in Hollywood right now, and one of them may have just snagged a new director.

Eli Roth has left Meg, the film adaptation of Steve Alten's bestseller novel that centers on two guys trying to destroy a killer shark off the coast of California. That shark is Meg, short for Megalodon, a 60-foot beast that is one of the most notorious badasses in Earth's history; the real animal went extinct years ago, but in the book, there's one still alive that terrorizes the West Coast. Roth was set to direct the project, but Deadline says he "quietly exited" the project and now National Treasure director Jon Turteltaub is in talks to bring it to the big screen. No deal has been signed yet, but even though I don't normally dig Roth's movies, I still have to consider this a downgrade just because he sounded so much better suited to the material.

The setting of the book is being moved from California to China in order to allow for better distribution and co-financing overseas, in yet another attempt to capitalize on the growing Chinese market. Here's the synopsis of the book:

On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean’s deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he’s sure he saw but still can’t prove exists – Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds.

Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. With a Ph.D. in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub.

Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he’s never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time. MEG is about to surface. When she does, nothing and no one is going to be safe, and Jonas must face his greatest fear once again.