Researchers aboard the floating laboratory Aquatica have been playing God and now, the terror of Judgment Day has arrived.

Dr. Susan McAlester’s (SAFFRON BURROWS) experiments are on the verge of creating medical history. Using mako sharks, one of nature’s fastest and most perfect killing machines, Dr. McAlester hopes to find the key to the regeneration of human brain tissue. But to reach her goal, she has violated ethical codes, genetically re-engineering the DNA of the sharks. Making them smarter. Making them faster. Turning them from dangerous predators into predatory monsters.

But McAlester has more to worry about than the deadly specimens at the center of her studies. Her questionable methods have put a strain on the relationships with her fellow Aquatica crew members, chiefly shark expert Carter Blake (THOMAS JANE) and Sherman "Preacher" Dudley (LL COOL J). Escalating the stakes, the researchers’ skeptical financiers are nervous and have threatened to shut down the off-shore facility on the eve of a round of key tests.

Under the watchful eye of financial backer Russell Franklin (SAMUEL L. JACKSON), Susan and her team successfully extract brain tissue from the largest of the mako sharks, only to watch in horror moments later as the shark exacts a revenge that results in irreparable damage to the research facility. With a tropical storm swirling around the now sinking Aquatica, the scientists and workers find themselves stalked by the terrifying new generation sharks–fighting against the deadly monsters they helped to create.

Also starring in the film are JACQUELINE McKENZIE as marine biologist Janice Higgins, MICHAEL RAPAPORT as facility engineer Todd Scoggins and STELLAN SKARSGÅRD as research physician Jim Whitlock.

"Deep Blue Sea" is an Alan Riche-Tony Ludwig/Akiva Goldsman Production and is directed by RENNY HARLIN, produced by AKIVA GOLDSMAN, TONY LUDWIG and ALAN RICHE. The script is written by DUNCAN KENNEDY and DONNA POWERS & WAYNE POWERS. DUNCAN HENDERSON and BRUCE BERMAN serve as executive producers. Warner Bros. distributes the film, with Village Roadshow distributing in select territories.

Joining the filmmakers is a select behind-the-camera crew, including director of photography STEPHEN WINDON, A.C.S. ("Firestorm," "The Postman"); production designer WILLIAM SANDELL ("Air Force One," "Total Recall"); and editors FRANK J. URIOSTE, A.C.E. ("Lethal Weapon 4," "Cliffhanger"), DEREK G. BRECHIN ("Basic Instinct," "Die Hard") and DALLAS S. PUETT ("Lethal Weapon 4," "Executive Decision").

The mako shark is a highly prized sport fish; while not as infamous as the great white, the mako is known for its speed and maneuverability in the water, clocking in at more than 60 miles per hour. They are aggressive in temperament and have a capacity for consuming large prey. The gestation period for the mako shark is approximately 12 months. The gestation period for a feature film script with genetically altered mako sharks–about four years.

In late 1994, the producing team of Alan Riche and Tony Ludwig received a script that had been written on speculation, and they remember, "We got this great script about sharks and we hadn’t read or heard of anything like it…well, since ‘Jaws.’ Only in that film, the shark was in its own environment. In ‘Deep Blue Sea,’ through a series of occurrences, the sharks are now in our environment. So the basic premise is what if these monsters were suddenly stalking us where we live."

Riche adds, "The shark is the archetype of that which lurks below our consciousness. There’s an ancient fear here."

The producers brought the script to Warner Bros. The project, as it lay on the page, was an ambitious one–a modern day horror tale about a group of scientists attempting to survive attacks from the genetically-engineered sharks they created–that required state-of-the-art effects (animatronics and CGI), as well as a studio facility that could accommodate the film’s massive floating and submerged sets. The script also called for a young, athletic cast that could meet the physical demands of the diving and stunts. And perhaps most importantly, the project needed to be helmed by a director adept at the larger-than-life fireworks and scale of an all-stops-out action picture.

"It took about 2 _ years to get to the point where we knew we could get the right picture made," offers Ludwig, "and it really had less to do with what we were doing and more to do with the technology that had been created. In a confluence of events, ‘Titanic’ was just beginning to be developed, and Fox Baja Studios was being built for that movie. The ‘Free Willy’ series of pictures had become hugely successful utilizing constantly refined computer-driven animatronic technology. It was those two events, coupled with the development of this picture–all of it working at the same time–that brought us to the point where we could begin ‘Deep Blue Sea.’"

Writer/producer Akiva Goldsman was approached by Warner Bros. to come aboard for development and remembers, "Up until that point, doing a shark picture meant heads above the water and underwater POV shots of flailing hands and feet–that’s limiting. But what we had was a story of a sinking facility. People aren’t just dog-paddling or swimming away from sharks. You have people running, half-submerged in water, leaping onto shelves and scaling walls with sharks nipping at their feet in pursuit. It’s scary and interesting and takes advantage of the kind of technologies that weren’t available until quite recently."

Another turning point for the picture was the availability of acclaimed action director Renny Harlin who offered, according to Riche and Ludwig, "the idea of somebody who can grasp huge concepts and, at the same time, intimate, suspenseful drama, bringing all of that huge scope down to the human level. How are these humans operating? How are they reacting to this larger-than-life, bigger-than-they-can-handle environment? Renny is the perfect choice for all of that."

Harlin remarks, "‘Deep Blue Sea’ is an epic scale action thriller that happens to be a horror film. It’s not a science fiction movie, like movies that take place in outer space. With sharks, you’re dealing with creatures that are very real, since they’re predators that share the environment openly with us. I felt that it was very important to make the story and the characters very, very real, so the fact that the sharks are the threat is also real, therefore making this picture, in essence, about you and me in that situation."

"What we have here," concludes the director, "is something more than we’ve seen before. We’ve seen sharks on the beach, sharks in the ocean. But here we see sharks in the living room, sharks in the bedroom, in this facility as it is flooding. I guess our motto for the movie is ‘You can swim, but you can’t hide.’"

In the classic horror movies of the past, part of the fun arises from the "who’s- going-to-get-it-next?" effect. Harlin and his producers embraced this concept when it came to casting the motion picture.

Harlin offers, "We wanted to cast actors who were solid actors but not necessarily movie stars, as in the first ‘Alien’ movie, where nobody could have expected that Sigourney Weaver was going to survive. We really wanted to twist the story and put the audience in a position where they have no idea who is who, or what’s going to happen to these people. We want them to get to know these people as real, true flesh-and-blood characters rather than ‘movie stars.’"

Producer Goldsman echoes, "The advantage to casting actors, as opposed to stars, is that you may identify with a character who is suddenly taken away, leaving you feeling stranded. In ‘Alien,’ Tom Skerritt is so clearly the hero of the movie. When he’s killed you feel, as I’m sure Ripley [Sigourney Weaver] did, ‘my God, I’m left here without somebody to protect me.’"

But Harlin also wanted to cast Oscar-nominated actor (and star of the director’s "The Long Kiss Goodnight") Samuel L. Jackson ("a movie star who is an actor") in the movie, "…as a kind of anchor in the middle of the story. Once we had him, I went after the other cast members–solid performers who could pull off these characters as real, emotional and as touching as possible. And meet the challenges of these incredibly physical roles."

Ludwig adds, "We really wanted to turn upside down the audience expectation that is inherent in this kind of a genre movie. Who’s gonna live and who’s gonna die?"

Jackson comments, "I looked forward to doing this picture, and it’s something different for me. I grew up watching monster movies. Even though this has a different kind of monster, it has all of the elements of films like ‘Frankenstein,’ ‘The Wolfman’ and of course ‘Jaws.’ But ‘Deep Blue Sea’ takes a lot of the conventions from previous films and turns them into something new. Inside it is a great monster movie plus a big chase movie, and I like being chased by things."

Jackson also adds, "You know, we’re the smartest thing on the planet theoretically, but when we get in the ocean, we’re out of our element, other things become a lot brighter and stronger and faster and more adept at dealing than we are. So we are put in a position of having to out-think the sharks, and that’s one of the appealing elements of this film."

The filmmakers had seen Thomas Jane in several acclaimed independent features and approached him to play shark wrangler Carter Blake. Jane says, "I knew it was going to be tough and challenging and worth every second. You get 40,000 gallons of water dumped on you. You get dragged around by a 8,000 pound shark. Fall off of ladders. Get burned. Drowned. Beaten. It’s been fun."

Jane continues, "When you read the script it says, ‘Carter steps outside.’ It doesn’t say, ‘Carter steps outside and gets hit by 4,000 gallons of water, and a helicopter hovers over his head in a swirling tropical thunderstorm at sea, and suddenly a two-ton shark just misses him by inches.’ But that’s what it’s like working on a Harlin picture." (The actor prepared for the role with an extensive workout regimen and admits, "Sometimes even that didn’t ready me for the work…but it’s been a great ride.")

Harlin had also caught English actress Saffron Burrows in several independent films, where she had done "serious character work." She herself says, "The physical elements were appealing, but it was the strength of McAlester’s character and her complexities that drew me to the role. I was interested in playing someone flawed, with so much that she really hasn’t acknowledged about herself. I love the fact that we’re not big action heroes. We’re normal people who are put in an extreme environment and then have to try to survive in a very human way."

As he had with millions of his fans, LL Cool J had connected with Harlin on a musical level at first. Then the director saw a couple of his films and cast him as Sherman "Preacher" Dudley, whom Cool J describes as "a cook who is a man of God, kind of like Robert Duvall’s ‘The Apostle’ meets Chef Boyardee–then he has to run from underwater aliens. It’s great. They should put on the movie posters ‘Come on in…Keep your clothes on…Go home soaking.’"

The actor sees "Deep Blue Sea" as a personal "opportunity to grow. I’ve achieved a lot in music, but it’s time for a change, time to grow."

For the role of marine biologist Janice Higgins, filmmakers found Australian actress Jacqueline McKenzie, who had received the Australian equivalent of an Oscar for her film work in her native country. (Harlin explains, "I felt lucky that she wanted to do this type of film, but for her–and for the other actors, too–we had some interesting characters to offer. They wanted to come and play with the sharks, be in the water, do some intense physical work and work on characters different from what they had been doing previously.")

McKenzie says, "Back home, sharks are bad news. As a child, when I’d get a glass of water, my father would say, ‘If you put salt in there, there’ll be a fin swimming around inside of a minute.’ ‘Deep Blue Sea’ has actually been very good because I’ve been able to put to rest a few demons. I don’t usually bite my nails, but I did on this film."

Known for a wide range of roles in a series of independent and studio films, versatile actor Michael Rapaport was also approached (Harlin had produced a short film of Rapaport’s a few years before.) The actor brought a wry sense of humor to his role as Scoggins, a mathematical genius and the facility’s engineer.

Rapaport observes, "It’s been a great experience, getting to work on a Renny Harlin project. I’ve never done anything this size. It’s an entire world, this set. It’s huge and it’s real. What you see is what you get. That’s just the kind of dedication and involvement that Renny gets for his movies. Good people. Cool cast. Lots of water."

Fellow Scandinavian Stellan Skarsgård [Harlin is Finnish, Skarsgård, Swedish] was hired to play researcher Jim Whitlock, and the actor notes, "I’ve always been interested in food, so it’s fabulous to be able to play it for once. It’s fun to be working with Renny–he’ll throw a line at me in Swedish every now and then, which is hysterical, because he has this terrible Finnish accent. He told me that there would be real sharks in the movie, which there are, but the sharks they created are incredible and they’re better paid than I am…I should have been a shark. But it’s great to be on such a big show; it attracted the boy in me."

"The ensemble cast is almost too good to be true," concludes Harlin, "and I do warn the actors when I cast my movies. I say, ‘Have you seen any of my movies before? You do realize that it was so-and-so climbing that mountain, and it was so-and-so underwater in that scene.’ And I try to paint the grimmest possible picture and say, ‘It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be physical. But it’s also going to be a lot of fun, and you’ll definitely get to do something that you haven’t done before.’ It’s an adventure on both sides of the camera."

Even before casting had been begun (almost one year before cameras rolled), filmmakers were hard at work assuring that one of the most dynamic elements of the film–the sharks–were as real and as menacing as possible. Filmmakers began by assembling an elite team of technical wizards who excelled at creating realistic (often benign, sometimes lethal) animals for use on the big screen. It included: production designer WILLIAM SANDELL; shark action supervisor WALT CONTI; visual effects supervisor JEFFREY OKUN; and special effects supervisor JOHN RICHARDSON.

Harlin elaborates, "One of the secrets of the success of ‘Jaws’–and it’s a classic, don’t get me wrong–is that they didn’t reveal too much of the shark, mostly because the technology of the time wouldn’t support such a creature. So they turned a disadvantage into an advantage. But it’s 25 years later, and audiences, accustomed to animatronics and computer-generated imagery, need to see more.

"To ensure that sense of reality," continues Harlin, "we are mixing animatronic sharks, digitally created sharks and footage of real sharks, and are creating seamless animals that look and act like real sharks. In the beginning of the movie we set up the characters and then slowly bring the sharks into the picture, showing what they are capable of doing. We are really showing the whole monster interacting with the actors…we’re hiding nothing."

The "shark team" began by immersing themselves in video, watching a huge array of shark footage, often viewing it frame by frame, analyzing the motion and studying the personalities of some of nature’s most perfect killing machines. They were faced with the daunting task of copying nature.

Conti comments, "The number one thing about capturing sharks is getting their energy. They’re always cruising kind of slowly, then they snap and just go with this incredible burst of energy. In that way, most of the time, sharks are somewhat lethargic. So probably our biggest challenge was replicating that speed and energy for those lunges. Also, sharks’ jaws actually float in their skulls, giving them a specific kind of motion. As far as I know, we’re the first animatronics team to totally mimic the multifaceted jaw of the shark."

Conti echoes Harlin, in that the kind of effects possible today were simply not available in earlier films, in which they showed pieces of a shark.

"We took the approach of ‘let’s re-create the shark.’ We’ve basically tried to mimic the shark all in one piece. Our sharks actually swim on their own. More than trying to create specific effects [biting, lunging], we re-created the entire shark," says Conti.

And not just one shark, but four-and-one-half sharks. Dr. McAlester’s work genetically alters a first generation pair for reproduction (one male and one female, each about 15-feet long and about 2,000 pounds). They in turn give birth to one 25-foot, 8,000-pound Generation II monster. For purposes of shooting, Conti’s team created three Gen I sharks and one-and-one-half Gen II sharks that executed all of the moves called for in the script.

Modeling their creations on mako sharks produced even more challenges for the technicians. The mako are the fastest fish in the ocean. Every detail of their movement, as well as every variation in their skin texture and color fell under Conti’s scrutiny. And inside the expertly copied rubber-skinned animals beat the heart of a tiny space shuttle.

"The complex interior structure is much more akin to something found in aerospace technology. We lifted a lot of hydraulic and electronic schematics from aircraft. And controlling it all is a computerized brain, which allows us to record exact moves, creating this timed performance with very specific movements that can be repeatedly executed with just the touch of a button," says Conti.

Conti’s sharks were able to perform such meticulous and challenging movements that filmmakers stepped up their usage of the animatronics, utilizing them in one scene that had been tagged originally for Okun’s visual effects team to execute. They got their opportunity with the key scene in which the Aquatica team successfully removes brain tissue from a sedated mako, which moments later, lashes out at its captors and seriously wounds one of McAlester’s team.

Conti explains, "Initially, everyone assumed that we were going to use visual effects to do the shot. It was stunt coordinator R.A. RONDELL who suggested we try it with our shark–and in the back of my mind I was always hoping that we’d get a shot at doing it. So we programmed the shark to lunge over, grab the arm [of a crew member] and rip it off. We set about 10 cameras to roll and we just did it…and it looks wonderful. There’s no trickery there. The shark is actually lunging and ripping off the arm in one piece. It’s a continuous take and, because of the technology we have, it’s totally believable."

Producer Riche vouches for the authenticity of Gen I and Gen II, saying, "I’m an avid scuba diver and when I was in Palau, I was surrounded by 20 sharks. And there’s no difference between those and the ones in our film. Some of our actors had to have a little convincing to get into the tanks with them."

Once filmmakers had their ensemble cast (both actors and sharks), all systems were go for filming at a facility practically tailor-made to meet the challenges (both wet and dry) present in the script–Fox Studios Baja. (The facility, after all, had been built to specification for the filming of the most successful motion picture of all time–James Cameron’s "Titanic.")

Harlin explains, "If you shoot in the real ocean, you’re trying to control waves, currents, winds, the sun–water pictures have a reputation for being horribly difficult shoots. By shooting at Fox Baja, we could maximize the resources available and eliminate a lot of the potential for danger, maximizing safety in the process. They’ve also got the biggest water tanks in the world."

On August 3, 1998, principal photography began on "Deep Blue Sea."

Another character with more screen time than any of the actors (or the sharks) is the ocean. Visual effects supervisor Okun was Harlin’s waterboy.

Okun says, "If you watch water, it has a magic and a mystery. But shooting on the ocean is notorious for its difficulty and its destructiveness–salt water is corrosive. So filming in a controlled environment is advantageous. With the state of the art of tanks being built around the world, like at Baja, we’re able to accomplish so much more. Combined with the abilities of visual effects, and we can take a drop of water and turn it into an ocean."

Fox Studios Baja (three miles south of Rosarito, Mexico) is a completely self-contained production facility that features some of the world’s largest stages and filming tanks (that hold a combined volume of more than 20 million gallons) and a filtration plant capable of delivering 9,000 gallons of filtered and chlorinated sea water per minute. In addition, the studio features a full range of other offices and services necessary to accomplish any filming requirements (office space, scenery shops, dressing rooms, wardrobe facilities and post-production areas).

The centerpiece of the "Deep Blue Sea" sets, the Research Station Aquatica, was constructed in the studio’s Tank #1, a poured-concrete pool covering a total area of more than 360,000 square feet. (Tank 1 housed the largest set of "Titanic"–the 90%-scale model of the H.M.S. Titanic herself.) The majority of the tank is three-and-one-half feet deep, but it also features two sections which, when flooded in combination, provide tank space up to 40 feet in depth; when totally flooded, Tank 1 holds a staggering 17 million gallons of sea water.

Tank 1 also features an overflow wall on the ocean side which, when filmed from the "land" side, provides an unobstructed view of the Pacific Ocean and creates the illusion of an infinite seamless horizon–nothing but water. This feature proved useful to production designer Sandell and crew, who constructed the Research Station Aquatica as two halves of a circle; by simply reversing some smaller set pieces, the illusion could be created that the research station was being filmed from opposing sides (when, in fact, the camera would stay mounted on the "land" side.)

Other major sets (Dr. McAlester’s research lab, crew quarters and various other offices, hallways and service and elevator shafts) were constructed on the studio’s four additional (and two of which are floodable) stages and tanks.

One of the most challenging scenes (officially Scene 133) became known as the "elevator shaft" sequence. As the research station floods, surviving Aquatica team members are forced into an elevator shaft in order to escape from their deadly experiment subjects–and not everyone escapes. The shaft is a tall and somewhat narrow space (basically a concrete tower), and when filled with actors, equipment (and water), provided a challenging and cramped work environment. In order to pull it off, actors and technicians had to put all of their faith in each other.

Sandell comments, "The storyboards alone for that scene are the size of a small phone book. I don’t know how anybody kept it straight in their heads; we barely could and we designed it."

Okun observes, "This film is full of major challenges, mostly anytime anyone is killed by the sharks. Conti’s sharks are huge, powerful and incredibly fast machines. So when one of the characters is interacting with Gen I or Gen II…it’s like dancing with an automobile on a freeway. Even given the fact that they are incredibly facile and controllable, we often chose to do things at a slow speed, or chose to use a visual effect (CGI) in combination with the animatronics."

During Scene 133, one of the unlucky cast members becomes lunch for the shark, ending up in the mouth of the beast and being slowly (and dramatically) pulled under the rising water in the elevator shaft. The scene required the actor to be in the jaws of Conti’s shark for repeated takes. The actor’s reaction ("I’m not getting in there!") was tempered with confidence after watching the large machine go through the scene over and over, never varying in its execution.

***

Filming "Deep Blue Sea" left each cast and crew member with varying reactions to the experience of coming face-to-face with sharks…animatronic and otherwise. Michael Rapaport perhaps speaks for a majority of "Deep Blue Sea"-ers when he closes, "No more swimming with sharks for me. Goldfish, that’s what I swim with now, goldfish. You can keep them in a tank, keep them under control if they try and get out of hand. Now, I’m a goldfish kind of guy."

Warner Bros. Presents, In Association with Village Roadshow Pictures - Groucho III Film Partnership, An Alan Riche-Tony Ludwig/Akiva Goldsman Production of A Renny Harlin Film: "Deep Blue Sea," starring Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, LL Cool J, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, Stellan Skarsgård and Samuel L. Jackson. The music is by Trevor Rabin. The co-producer is Rebecca Spikings. It is edited by Frank J. Urioste, A.C.E., Derek G. Brechin and Dallas S. Puett and the production designed by William Sandell. The director of photography is Stephen Windon, A.C.S. The executive producers are Duncan Henderson and Bruce Berman. The film is written by Duncan Kennedy and Donna Powers & Wayne Powers. "Deep Blue Sea" is produced by Akiva Goldsman, Tony Ludwig and Alan Riche and directed by Renny Harlin. Distributed by Warner Bros., A Time Warner Entertainment Company.