A classic creature feature horror movie that is one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorites has found a new streaming home at the perfect time.
The director is best known for helming snappy crime and action movies including Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Jackie Brown. The fact that Quentin Tarantino movies are chock-full of references to cult and genre films, especially those from the 1970s, has led him to become regarded as something of a cinema historian, to the point that he recently published the film theory book Cinema Speculation. A lot of weight is often put on the movies that he lists as his favorites, which include Sorcerer, Rolling Thunder, The Great Silence, and the genre-redefining movie that has recently joined a new streamer.
The movie in question is Steven Spielberg’s 1975 shark thriller Jaws. During a 2022 interview on the CinemaBlend podcast ReelBlend, he called it “the greatest movie ever made.” The general public would seem to agree with him, because in addition to the movie boasting a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score of 97% from critics, it is Verified Hot on the platform’s Popcornmeter with a 98% score aggregated from more than 1,000 verified user reviews. The movie, which spawned legions of imitators, was also a runaway box office smash at the time, more or less single-handedly establishing the summer blockbuster tradition.
Now, as of July 1, Jaws – which was nominated for four Oscars on top of its commercial success, winning three – is streaming on the NBCUniversal streaming platform Peacock. All three of the movie’s sequels are also streaming on Peacock as of July 1, namely 1978’s Jaws 2, 1983’s Jaws 3-D, and 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge.
According to FlixPatrol, which uses proprietary methodology to determine the success of streaming titles, the original Jaws has already climbed to No. 10 on the daily chart of the most-watched movies on Peacock as of July 2, encroaching on a number of titles that have been well-established in the Top 10, including the DreamWorks animated smash Shrek 2 (which has been on the chart for more than 50 days) and the new Peacock-exclusive Chloe Bailey thriller Strung.
The creature feature franchise has found this new streaming home at the perfect time, because Independence Day is approaching in the United States, on July 4. The original movie has become inextricably linked with the holiday because the killer great white shark in the movie menaced the shores of Amity Island ahead of the Fourth of July weekend, a major tourist period that caused the mayor (Murray Hamilton) to clash with Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) about potentially closing the beaches.
While none of the sequels are specifically set during the Fourth of July (Jaws 2 and Jaws 3-D are set more generally during the summertime and Jaws: The Revenge takes place during the Christmas season), the fact that the original horror movie is so closely linked to the holiday will likely help boost its streaming viewership just three days after its arrival on the platform, and its legendary status could lead viewers to embrace a full marathon of the franchise during that period as well.
- Release Date
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June 20, 1975
- Runtime
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124 minutes
- Writers
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Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
- Producers
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David Brown