Did You Know?

Original director John D. Hancock was fired and replaced by Jeannot Szwarc.

Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss were approached to direct and star in the sequel but production on Close Encounters of the Third Kind was running behind and they declined to participate.

In one of the boat scenes a young man is seen reading a book: "Jaws" by Peter Benchley.

When the crew had to go back to Martha's Vineyard for re-shoots in the Fall of 1977, many of the trees had already lost their leaves. The crew actually put fake leaves on the trees to make it look like it was still Summer.

The camera operator used a cowboy saddle to be on top of the shark in a few scenes.

The artificially constructed Cable Junction island set caused numerous problems during filming. The island was made from plastic material on a barge-like platform, which was so slick that it was difficult to traverse or even grab hold of, and this resulted in numerous retakes having to be shot. Due to its not being anchored down properly, it once drifted away in the ocean. In the making of Jaws 2 DVD documentary, director Jeannot Szwarc recounted the day when he was informed that his island set was "on its way to Cuba".

Murray Hamilton's scenes were shot hurriedly because his wife was in failing health during production of the film.

Marc Gilpin (Sean Brody) claims that when they were shooting one of the scenes on the makeshift raft of wrecked yachts, they were being circled by a real hammerhead shark. All the actors were scared and began to scream and holler at the production crew who were filming that particular scene from a distance. The crew were oblivious to the danger and assumed the actors were simply 'in character' and gave them the thumbs up!

When shooting originally began (with John D. Hancock as director), Amity was envisioned as a near ghost-town, with boarded-up stores, crumbling facades on buildings and an economy in shambles after the events of Jaws. Hancock quickly ran into problems: First, the residents of Martha's Vineyard, where the film was being shot, refused to allow permission for their stores and houses to be boarded up. Secondly, his dailies were constantly being criticized by the studio for being "too contrasty and blue", with perpetual requests to lighten up the tone of the film. According to Hancock, however, his eventual firing was the result of a power struggle between co-producer Richard Zanuck and MCA chairman Sid Sheinberg, in particular Sheinberg's insistence that his wife Lorraine Gary (Ellen Brody) have a bigger role in the film. Zanuck adamantly refused, and Hancock's wife and co-screenwriter Dorothy Tristan eventually submitted a screenplay that did not include Sheinberg's requested changes. Moreover, Hancock ran into problems on the film with an unnamed female actress and had her fired; unbeknown to him, the actress was the girlfriend of an MCA executive. With a month of filming in the can, and 18 months in total already spent on the production, Hancock and Tristan were both fired, halting production on the film and leading to the eventual hiring of Jeannot Szwarc as director.

This is Keith Gordon's first film.

In a deleted scene, after the copter sinks, the shark attacks the pilot underwater. The sounds of the pilot screaming and the copter being damaged are the exact same sounds from Jaws when the shark attacks the shark cage and Hooper.