As of right now, this is all over movie news sites and to be quite honest, the story has been overblown a bit. You should take the following with a grain of salt.

LA Times has posted an article on Jaws producer Richard D. Zanuck and his work on Clash of the Titans and Alice in Wonderland. In the middle of the article, the topic turns to Jaws, where  the terms like “CG” and “3D” pop up.

“In desperation, we came up with so many good ideas — like the floating barrels, for instance, that were shown on the screen to suggest this shark beneath them, underwater — and we did it because we didn’t have the shark,” Zanuck said. “In the script, the shark is on Page 1 when the girl gets eaten. It became more terrorizing than anything we could have hoped for. If we had CG then we would have had the shark in every frame.”

Zanuck and Spielberg spoke a few years ago about going back to the original film with the digital paintbrush of CG effects to create a more horrific predator. They decided, for the time being, to leave the film alone, although Zanuck says he is intrigued by the notion of adding 3D effects to the 1976 classic for a theatrical re-release.)

Personally, I don’t believe for a second that Jaws will be re-released in 3D. If you notice, the 3D part that has gotten sites like AICN and Bloody Disgusting fussing is simply just a brief and vague mention. While it’s a bit more likely that CG touch ups/additions could be eventually made, I have my serious doubts about that as well. (The only real argument to the contrary is “They did it to E.T.!”) It simply states that he is ‘intrigued’ by the idea. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s been chatting up Universal and Steven Spielberg about legitimately releasing Jaws in 3D with a big cartoon shark.

Tags: 3D, Jaws, Richard D. Zanuck