Earlier this week, we posted a pretty crazy interview with The Meg director Jon Turteltaub, wherein he explained to us that his vision for the film was for it to be a gory, rated R shark attack flick. “I am so disappointed the film wasn’t more bloody or disgusting,” Turteltaub openly told us, adding “the number of really horrifying, disgusting and bloody deaths we had lined up that we didn’t get to do is tragic.”

Turteltaub actually filmed some gorier deaths, but during post-production the studio made the decision that The Meg would have to be a PG-13 film. So, well, bye bye gore.

“We shot or even did a lot of visual effects for [gory scenes],” Turteltaub explained. “We just realized there’s no way we’re keeping this PG-13 if we show this. It’s too fun a movie to not let people who don’t like blood and people who are under, say, 14 years old into the theater. I was very hesitant to cut out a lot of blood and gore.”

Sadly, the visual effects on those cut scenes weren’t ever finished, so we don’t expect to see them on home video. After all, it’d cost the studio millions to finish them. Sigh.

Crazy enough, star Jason Statham is now also speaking out about the original vision for The Meg being flushed down the toilet in favor of a PG-13 action-horror movie, telling Collider that the movie being released this weekend isn’t exactly the movie he signed up for.

“Script’s totally different,” Statham explained, talking about how much the movie changed after he originally came aboard. “There was so many different … sometimes you just go, “How did it happen? How did it go from this to this to this to that?” You just can’t keep a track on it. I guess if you have the control to keep it a certain way you would, but you don’t. They have a movie to make. They have so many people deciding on what action stays and what scenes stay. How the characters … In the end they want to put something at the beginning. The whole thing at the beginning where I do a rescue on a sub? That was not in the script that I read. That was all brand new stuff, good or bad. I’m just letting you know.”

He continued, “I’m just saying it was radically different. John’s interpretation of this is a fun end of summer [movie]. It’s full of humor. It’s a little bit more directed to a different taste of what my own is… I like more gory adult stuff. I’m a lot older but I can’t speak for what this film could possibly speak to a younger audience. I might have made a film that not many people wanted to see. I’m not a filmmaker. I’m sort of an actor that’s going to portray a role. I go there but I’ve learned not to get too attached with your own idea of what something could be.”

He adds, “But you go, Where’s the fucking blood? It’s like, There’s a shark.”

Speaking more positively about the film, Statham told Collider, “I admire John’s sort of great spin that he’s done. He’s put this in a place which is totally unique I think. No one was expecting The Meg to be a fun sort of humorous ride or romp or whatever. He’s put his very light-hearted way into it and not tried to make it like anything before. He’s trying to give it his own sort of stamp of tone.”