New: A 25-Inch Jaws 3 Collectible Shark from Shark City Ozark!

To paraphrase one of the taglines for Jaws 3, here's a deadly new attraction . . . that you can add to your Jaws collection, courtesy of Shark City Ozark (SCO).

The new Jaws 3 shark is part of the SCO Ultimate Bruce Shark Collector's Set, which previously consisted of intricate, scale-accurate models of the mechanical sharks that were used in Jaws and Jaws 2. Like the previous entries in this set, these sharks are thickly roto-cast out of pure undiluted white resin, making them almost solid with over a half-dozen layers of thickness. Such casting makes the sharks more stable to ship and a lighter weight to handle and display (which probably makes the SCO Ultimate Bruce Shark Collector's Set sharks much more durable than the actual mechanical sharks themselves). Click here to pre-order the Jaws 3 shark, and each shark will include a Certificate of Authenticity.

Thankfully, SCO shared some pictures with me about their latest contribution to the Jaws fan community, and you can click below to see the pictures and learn more details about this fin-tastic Jaws 3 shark replica courtesy of Mike V. Schultz, SCO owner and sculptor extraordinaire.

With Universal's ongoing stubbornness about licensing collectible Jaws products, the SCO Ultimate Bruce Shark Collector's Set is a godsend for fans who appreciate the mechanical sharks that made the Jaws movies so memorable and thrilling. Yet unlike the previous shark replicas SCO produced based on designs from Jaws and Jaws 2, Jaws 3 presented its own unique challenges. In particular, the full-sized mechanical shark's screen time in the second sequel had to be shared with smaller fake sharks that were used to provide the movie's 3D effects.

"There were many different sharks used to represent Bruce 3D on screen and each of them looked so different, so we chose the shark that everyone recognizes the most," Schultz mentioned in a post he did for Romain Neophyte's Jaws 3D tribute website. "For our shark, we found inspiration only in the full-sized, end-scenes shark that was caught in the water pump, crashed the control room, and terrorized the dolphins. We did not attempt to incorporate any of the other scale FX sharks, such as the tiny animation model, nor the cable controlled model, nor the over-sized head or mouth models, since none of them looked in any way like each other or everyone's favorite full-sized shark."

With the help of Neophyte's extensive archive of behind-the-scenes information and reference photos, SCO was able to bring the biggest star of Jaws 3 to vivid, collectible life. "We've got all the screen-accurate details that we could find in her, replicated down to scale fractions of an inch," Schultz explained. "She has slightly different eyes and barely off-center nostrils locations from side to side, and a bit of a reverse 'Elvis sneer'."

After studying so many details on the many mechanical sharks from the franchise, Schultz felt that the one made for Jaws 3 had the most organic appearance. "She has many great looking angels and curves on her ... she also has the most complex set of snout contours, a snout that looks slim from some angles and stout from others."

As Schultz remarked when discussing the details of his sculpt, "Her pectoral fins are blended to her body, just like the film's shark. Her skin is riddled with detail and textures straight from the silver screen and it really lends believability to her actual 25-foot long filming scale. In some photos, she really looks like a big (scale) rubber shark captured in motion."

The folks at SCO aren't content with just providing a Jaws 3 replica--they are also providing the option of customization. "Paint and detail customizations will be up to each customer," Schultz stated. "All of our sharks are made entirely by hand by my family and me in our working film FX studio located in Missouri, U.S.A. We can paint lighter or darker, or cleaner or gorier. Maybe someone will want the bang-stick wound on the snout-tip? Whatever little details customers want like this are no extra charge, as long as we can clearly communicate with each other and agree on what can be done. These unique requests make the shark builds extra fun for me!"

The fourth and final piece of the SCO Ultimate Bruce Shark Collector's Set, a replica of the mechanical shark from Jaws: The Revenge, will be ready sometime in the upcoming months, and I'll be posting about that here as soon as it's ready for pre-order. For comparison, below are three pictures of the sharks that have been made so far for the set.


Jaws:

Jaws 2:

Jaws 3:

For more details on the dozen different movie and real life sharks that you can add to your collection, please feel free to visit the official SCO site or contact them through the SCO Facebook page.

Another satisfied customer: Cal Acord, an operator of the mechanical sharks in Jaws,

holding his copy of the SCO Tow Sled Shark replica.