Original Story?

The idea for Peter Benchley's book came from a series of shark attacks on the New Jersey coast in 1916, which included 2 deaths & another injury several miles inland up a river.

I got to the bottom of this and it actually involved a shark getting trapped in a lagoon, not a lake. I read Richard Matheson's interview from the December '83 issue of Fangoria.

Here's what he says about the original story...


Fang: The screenplay is based on a story by Guerdon Trueblood.

Matheson: Until the moment I got the notice of credits on the film, I didn't even know who he was! I didn't even know he had written an outline. I never read it. So I have no idea, none whatsoever, what he did. I presume the reason they did this is because they had been working on the idea of a Lagoon where the shark manages to get in. The producer, Alan Landsburg told me that, so I started from there. But there is no resemblance between the two. There couldn't be, unless we were psychic, because I haven't read it.

So the only person who probably knows any more info about the original story is Guerdon Trueblood.