they could escape through the weaker mesh fences at the surface. In an effort to distract the shark from escaping to the open sea, Susan deliberately cuts her hand and dives into the water. Although she manages to distract the shark with her blood, she is unable to get out of the water, and is devoured, despite Carter's efforts to save her. While Carter is grabbing hold of the shark's dorsal fin, Preacher shoots the shark with a harpoon, but also pierces Carter's thigh. As the shark breaks through the fence, Carter orders Preacher to connect the trailing wire to a battery, sending an electric current through the wire and to an explosive charge in the harpoon, killing the shark. In the end, Carter reveals that he had managed to free himself in time, and joins Preacher to see a worker's boat en route on the horizon. Cast Saffron Burrows as Dr. Susan McCallister Thomas Jane as Carter Blake LL Cool J as Sherman "Preacher" Dudley Jacqueline McKenzie as Janice "Jan" Higgins Michael Rapaport as Tom Scoggins Stellan Skarsgård as Dr. Jim Whitlock Aida Turturro as Brenda Kerns Samuel L. Jackson as Russell Franklin Production Development The story of Deep Blue Sea was conceived by Australian screenwriter Duncan Kennedy after he witnessed the result of a "horrific" shark attack on a beach near his home. The tragedy contributed to a recurring nightmare of him "being in a passageway with sharks that could read his mind". This motivated him to write a spec script, while acknowledging the challenge of approaching a shark film without repeating Steven Spielberg's 1975 thriller Jaws. Although Warner Bros. bought the script in late 1994, actual development on the project did not start until two years later. When Renny Harlin was chosen to direct the film, Kennedy's screenplay, which had already been re-written by several writers at Warner Bros., was presented to Donna Powers and Wayne Powers, who turned it into the film's final script. According to Wayne, "The movie became essentially what we wrote. The draft we were first presented by [Warner Bros.] was much more of a military espionage, high-tech action movie, grenade launchers, that kind of thing. We wanted our team to include more blue-collar types and not to have weapons to fight back, to play it more as a horror film." Deep Blue Sea had a budget of $82 million and represented a