Steven Spielberg had doubts if he could finish filming one of his greatest movies of all time.

Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest filmmakers with an astounding legacy to his name. The director has produced several masterpieces but making all those movies took a lot of work. The director even almost gave up on a movie that came to be one of his greatest works.

Steven Spielberg | Source: Wikimedia Commons
The movie in talk here is none other than his 1975 thriller Jaws. The movie came to be a cult classic but it gave nightmares to Spielberg and his cast and crew. The legendary director himself revealed the nightmarish experience he had on the set of the horror thriller.

Making Jaws Was A Living Nightmare

A still from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975)
Amity Island beach was terrorized by a great white shark in Jaws, and the movie saw to it. But filming the movie was equally terrifying, though it was not the fear of the mechanical shark, Bruce, that was employed in the movie, but the very setting of the location. Amity Island, a fictional place where the movie takes place was filmed on the coast of Long Island. The crew, as Steven Spielberg revealed, was seasick.

“Being on Jaws became a living nightmare, and not because I didn’t know what I was doing or because I was struggling to find the movie in my head. I knew the film I wanted to make. I just couldn’t get the movie I had in mind on film as quickly as I wanted,” Spielberg told Vanity Fair while discussing his book, Spielberg: The First Ten Years.

“When we got out to the ocean, a lot of the crew got seasick, and once that passed, a kind of lethargy set in because we weren’t seemingly getting anything done. The end never seemed to be in sight, and yet I was the only person who could reassure the crew that there would be an end to this some day.”

Of course, the nightmarish curse eventually ended but not before taking a toll on everyone on set. Thankfully, the director and his crew had the courage to endure the extremity of filming the movie.

Steven Spielberg Thought He Might Get Replaced in Jaws

A still from Jaws

Without a shred of doubt, Spielberg did a marvelous job in the film. The movie is considered the first modern summer blockbuster and a breakthrough for the director. The movie was nominated for Best Picture Oscar while winning three categories including Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Sound. But before that, a cloud of doubt also haunted Spielberg as he thought he might get replaced.  “I remember on the 60th day of shooting, crew members came to me asking, ‘When are we going to be done with this movie?’” the director recalled (via Vanity Fair).

“And I would honestly say, ‘I don’t know. We could finish it if I get fired, if I’m dragged off the movie and replaced by someone who could complete it quickly. Or maybe they’ll shut us down.’ Whenever I talked about the possibility of me being fired or the show being shut down, most of the crew was happy about it—this wasn’t a labor of love for anybody. This was a physically impossible chore and people wanted to go home.”

It was a long process, Jaws took 159 days to complete filming, while it was scheduled for just 55 days. But all this sweat and tears and endurance came to fruition. Jaws went on to be a massive hit grossing over $476.5 million (per The Numbers) worldwide against the production budget of just $12 million.