JAWS
Created by author Peter Benchley and director Steven Spielberg, Jaws is the iconic media franchise that defined the modern summer blockbuster. Beginning with the 1974 bestseller and 1975 film, the IP encompasses four feature films, video games, theme park rides, stage plays, and extensive literary works.
Cronologia
Panoramica
The Jaws franchise originated with Peter Benchley's 1974 novel and expanded into a global pop-culture phenomenon following Steven Spielberg's 1975 feature film adaptation.
Widely credited with creating the summer blockbuster concept, the franchise includes four theatrical feature films (Jaws, Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D, and Jaws: The Revenge), official novelizations, non-fiction production accounts, numerous video games across multiple home and arcade platforms, stage adaptations, physical pinball machines, and world-renowned theme park attractions.
Origini
The franchise began with Peter Benchley's 1974 bestselling thriller novel Jaws, which detailed a giant great white shark preying on the resort town of Amity Island.
Filming for the movie adaptation began quietly in May 1974 on South Beach, Martha's Vineyard, directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown.
Production was famously arduous, suffering from camera boat sinkings and constant mechanical breakdowns of the animatronic shark, nicknamed 'Bruce'. Upon its release on June 20, 1975, the film achieved unprecedented box office success, becoming the first movie to pass $100 million in theatrical earnings and sparking nationwide 'shark fever'.
I PEZZI DI JAWS
Collezionismo
The Jaws collecting community focuses on physical media restorations, tabletop releases, retro gaming, and arcade physical assets. Home video collectors target special restored releases, ranging from the 1995 Laurent Bouzereau documentary featured on early laserdiscs to the 2012 negative restoration Blu-ray and the 2025 50th Anniversary 4K Ultra HD edition.
Physical gaming pieces are high-value collector items, such as Ravensburger's 2019 Jaws: The Board Game and Stern Pinball's 2024 physical JAWS Pinball line designed by Keith Elwin. In video games, collectors hunt original 1987 LJN NES cartridges as well as Limited Run Games' 2026 physical release of JAWS: Retro Edition for modern consoles like the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5.
Novelist Peter Benchley made a cameo appearance in the original film as a television news reporter on the beach.
