Our shark expert envisions Jaws 19: This time it’s wireless

Hollywood hasn’t yet given us the “Jaws 19” movie promised in “Back to the Future 2,” so we challenged University of Florida shark expert George Burgess to come up with a plot. His treatment is part action-adventure, part suspense and part “Austin Powers” — in short, a blockbuster.

“By the nineteenth movie, they will have run out of all the things that approximated reality a long time ago, so this would be fantasy, but something topical but people could relate to. Something that’s high-profile today is putting satellite tags on sharks to follow their movements. A group could be putting these tags on great white sharks, but unbeknownst to the public, they’re able to use it to control the shark. This nefarious group is now telling white sharks what to do so they can hold an area for ransom. It becomes an intrigue about how we have to catch this shark so we can get the satellite tag off of it. Some people will say you can't harm the shark because it’s an endangered species, but others will say we’ve got to kill this thing right away. In the meantime, an independent marine biologist — à la “Jaws” — goes out on his own to catch it just long enough to take the tag out so he can save the world and the animal at the same time. The big showdown is where the military has their machine guns ready to shoot it and the marine biologist in his khakis and his beard has to be the hero.”

We asked Burgess what role he might like to play. 

“I think it would be logical for me to be the bearded scientist.”

Works for us.