Jaws 2 famously didn't feature a return of Richard Dreyfuss' character Hooper. The 1978 follow-up to the original Jaws had a famously troubled production with a cast and creative team unconvinced that Steven Spielberg's 1975 killer shark opus needed a sequel. Despite the hesitation of many involved, Universal pushed forward with the shark slasher film, and familiar players like Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, and Murray Hamilton returned to reprise their roles.
The cast of the original Jaws is often considered to be one of the film's greatest assets. Scheider's Chief Brody brought a cool-headed sense of normalcy to the high-stakes plot, and Robert Shaw stole every scene he was in as the grizzled shark hunter Quint. The third member of the iconic trio was ichthyologist Matt Hooper, played with gleeful enthusiasm by Richard Dreyfuss. Despite originally written to be killed at the film's climax, a happy accident involving the film's live shark footage gave the character a reprieve, allowing him to live and swim home with Chief Brody at the end of the film.
Given that he survived the onslaught of the Amity Island shark attack, his return in the sequel only seems natural. However, the character of Hooper was omitted from Jaws 2 and never appeared in any of the further two sequels to the original Jaws, either. The answer as to why Dreyfuss didn't appear in Jaws 2 involves a peek behind the scenes and a look at the film's production.
When Jaws became a global phenomenon, Universal wasted precious little time in concocting plans for a sequel. With the first Jaws having been based on an original novel by Peter Benchley, an entirely original plot had to be written that continued the story. It didn't take long for production issues with the potentially R-rated Jaws film to begin bubbling up, beginning with Steven Spielberg's refusal to return and direct the sequel. The first film's production was a nightmare for the young director, and Spielberg had no interest in repeating the experience. John D. Hancock was hired to replace Spielberg, but when it became clear that Hancock was an ill fit for the film, he was let go and replaced by another director: Jeannot Szwarc. In front of the camera, returning actors like Roy Scheider were deeply hesitant to appear in the film, and the man behind Chief Brody infamously clashed with the director on set. The camaraderie that had defined Spielberg's set on even the toughest of days was completely missing from the production of Jaws 2.
Ultimately, the project's lack of Steven Spielberg compelled Richard Dreyfuss to refuse a return engagement as Hooper. Reportedly, Dreyfuss was offered a chance to return, but the actor refused to take the part unless Spielberg was directing the film. Although Spielberg briefly considered taking over directing duties after the firing of John D. Hancock, he ultimately decided against it, and any chance of Dreyfuss' involvement ended on the spot. Fortunately for both Dreyfuss and Spielberg, the stress of Jaws was far behind them, and by the time Jaws 2 finally hit screens in 1978, the two had already teamed up again for Spielberg's next epic film: 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
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