FILM · 1977 · UK
The Deep
53 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (53)
- #001
At the start of the film, Gail (Jacqueline Bisset) dives and lies beneath part of the wreck, then screams in pain as a giant green moray eel pulls her arm. In real life, stuntwoman Jackie Kilbride dislocated her shoulder while performing this scene. A diver was instructed to pull a stick tied to her wrist out of the wreckage; when the stick appeared, she pulled with all her strength, as instructed. Because there was no chance (or need) for a retake, the scene was shot in a single continuous take with multiple cameras.
- #002
An American network broadcast version included fifty-three minutes of extra footage not shown in theaters. This version aired over two nights and was never released on DVD.
- #003
Louis Gossett Jr., Jacqueline Bisset, Nick Nolte, Robert Shaw and director Peter Yates all had to learn how to scuba dive for this film.
- #004
The production shoot lasted 153 days, involved 8,895 dives, spent 10,870 person-hours underwater and consumed 1,054,000 cubic feet of compressed air.
- #005
The soundtrack was notable for being pressed on colorful, bright, transparent ocean-blue vinyl meant to evoke the film.
- #006
After Jaws (1975), this was the second of Peter Benchley's two novel adaptations to star Robert Shaw. Columbia Pictures studio executives were initially reluctant about Shaw headlining a film based on another Benchley book. Producer Peter Guber said: "There was no reluctance on my part or Robert's. Neither he nor I were worried about the previous associations. He's too good an actor to repeat himself, and the roles are completely different anyway. This is 'The Deep,' not 'Jaws II.'".
- #007
Robert Shaw was paid $650,000 plus a percentage point for his lead role in this film. Shaw once said: "For the first time in my career, I committed myself to a film before reading the script. So why this time? Just instinct. This production has tremendous potential. It smelled like a winner from the start."
- #008
A feeding frenzy of a school of grey sharks took seven hundred twenty dives and one thousand eighty hours of shooting. The sequence was filmed on the Great Barrier Reef off Australia, where it was said it could not be replicated anywhere else in the world.
- #009
Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte reportedly did not get along well when the film began, but they had a romantic relationship for much of the production schedule. This made producer Peter Guber very happy, because he believed that the more chemistry the two leads had, the better the dangerous dramatic scenes involving them would work in the film.
- #010
The shipwreck featured in the film is actually the R.M.S. Rhone, which sank in 1867 off Salt and Peter Islands in the British Virgin Islands, killing 125 of its 135 crew. The R.M.S. Rhone broke in two as it sank. The film was shot in the bow section of the ship, located about seventy-five feet underwater.
- #011
The lighthouse keeper, diving and treasure expert Romer Treece (Robert Shaw), was inspired by real-life treasure-hunting diver Teddy Tucker, who helped Peter Benchley write the novel. Tucker was hired as a special consultant on the production and appeared in the film as The Harbor Master.
- #012
The film is credited with making major stars of its two leads, Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset.
- #013
At the time it was filmed and released, this film was said to use the world's largest underwater set. With official permission from the Bermuda Government, a large slice was cut from the top of an island hill, a pit thirty-three feet (ten meters) deep and one hundred twenty feet (thirty-six and a half meters) wide was dug into it, and it was filled with millions of gallons of sea water pumped in fresh every day. The artificial marina was also stocked with a shark, a moray eel and three hundred fish.
- #014
The wreck of the "Goliath" was represented by the real-life wreck of the R.M.S. Rhone. Part of the ship was built as an underwater set under controlled conditions for more intimate and close-up shots of the actors.
- #015
It was the ninth highest-grossing film of 1977 in box office revenue.
- #016
It was Nick Nolte's first lead role in a major American film.
- #017
The film rights to the novel were bought by producer Peter Guber for $500,000 plus percentages while the book was still a draft. Guber read the novel one evening after Benchley finished writing it in late 1975. The deal for the film rights was made on November 5, 1975, the year Jaws (1975) was released.
- #018
The film's end title sequence states that "THE DEEP" was filmed live in four oceans: the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic and Indian Oceans.
- #019
When the novel was published in early 1976, it rose to number one within two weeks of publication and remained on the bestseller list for six months.
- #020
Author Peter Benchley can be briefly seen as one of the submarine crewmates in the prologue of the film's long version. The young Treece and Coffin roles were played by the sons of Robert Shaw and Eli Wallach.
- #021
Although Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset performed most of their own underwater scenes in the name of authenticity, the more dangerous scenes were still carried out by stunt performers.
- #022
After resigning as Vice President of Production at Columbia Pictures to make his own films, Peter Guber secured the screen rights to this film and obtained financing for it from Columbia Pictures within thirty-six hours of founding his own production company, Casablanca Filmworks.
- #023
The film is said to be the first to use an underwater continuity girl.
- #024
The beach elevator seen in the film was built solely for this picture at a cost of $80,000 (more than $405,000 in 2022). It was fully functional, made of steel and fiberglass, and stood 113 feet tall. It was completely removed after production ended.
- #025
Directors shortlisted to helm the film included John Boorman, Steven Spielberg and John Frankenheimer, but all were already committed to other productions at the time. Peter Yates, the film's director, was also on the shortlist; he was hired on the strength of Bullitt (1968) and Murphy's War (1971).
- #026
On set, the mechanical moray eel was named "Percy," much as the shark in Jaws (1975) was nicknamed "Bruce."
- #027
Florida, Jamaica, Catalina and the Bahamas were considered as the main shooting location, and it was ultimately decided to be Bermuda. The film's main shooting location was therefore the same as the setting in the film and the story of the source novel. Matching the two is not always the case elsewhere, since the economy and practicality of shooting somewhere else can make doubling another location more efficient.
- #028
A major talent search was conducted to find a fresh, bright, unknown young actress to take on the role of Gail Berke, and it was believed this would generate good publicity for the film. Peter Guber said: "There were wall-to-wall dates with sweet young things and wall-to-wall readings with an incredibly helpful Nick Nolte." The star search, however, proved pointless, and key production personnel still wanted the long-considered Jacqueline Bisset. Guber added: "The girls didn't have that 'O,' star quality, charisma, presence, whatever you call it. We still wanted Jacqueline Bisset for Gail more than ever." In the end, Bisset agreed to play Gail.
- #029
In the novel, the character Romer Treece dies at the end.
- #030
The film's publicity stated that roughly ten percent of it was shot on the water's surface, roughly forty percent underwater, and roughly fifty percent on land or in interiors.
- #031
It was the second film adaptation of a Peter Benchley novel, the first being Jaws (1975). Film versions of Benchley's novels became briefly popular in Hollywood from the mid-to-late 1970s because of the box-office success of Jaws (1975); he himself produced three sequels made during this period, including Jaws 2 (1978). Peter Benchley's film The Island (1980) was also made during this period. "The Deep" was Benchley's second novel.
- #032
Peter Benchley apparently struggled with the film's screenplay. After two drafts, Columbia Pictures decided the script needed new input, and Tracy Keenan Wynn was brought in to do rewrites. Wynn had previously, ironically, been a co-writer of The Drowning Pool (1975).
- #033
Sir Sean Connery, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster and Charlton Heston were considered for the role of Romer Treece.
- #034
The film opened the same weekend as the highly anticipated Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) (June 17, 1977), and when final box-office calculations were compiled that Sunday, this film was also expected to be a contender. However, word of mouth for the sequel to The Exorcist (1973) was very negative, and word of mouth for The Deep (especially Jacqueline Bisset's wet T-shirt scuba-diving scenes) was so positive that The Deep won the weekend, while Exorcist II, whose grosses declined from Friday onward, came in a shameful (and distant) second.
- #035
The film was released eighteen months after the publication of its source novel.
- #036
Candice Bergen, Katharine Ross and Charlotte Rampling were considered for the role of Gail Berke.
- #037
Robert Shaw learned to scuba dive in his own swimming pool at his home in Ireland. However, the instructor sent by the Columbia studio was aware that Shaw was a notorious drunk, which could make scuba-diving lessons very dangerous.
- #038
In one of the film's final shots, an arm and hand clutching a piece of treasure rise out of the sea. A similar shot was used for the main film poster of The Island (1980), another film adaptation of a Peter Benchley novel, in which an arm and hand emerge from the sea gripping a pirate knife.
- #039
Cameron Mitchell played the Captain of the "Goliath," but all of his scenes were removed from the final cut.
- #040
The letters "O. P. N. S. C." on the medallion stood for "Ora pro nobis, Santa Clara."
- #041
In the Blu-ray version, the first line of dialogue is not spoken until eight minutes and forty seconds into the film.
- #042
A prologue depicting the 1943 shipwreck, featuring a cameo by author Peter Benchley, was filmed but cut from the final release.
- #043
Although uncredited in the titles, the author of the novel on which the film is based plays the First Captain of the "Goliath." It was the second of his three cameos in films adapted from his novels, the others being Jaws (1975) and Creature (1998).
- #044
The film's story is set largely in Bermuda. When the film was released, real-life disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle were a subject of great interest from the mid-to-late 1970s. Other films of the period that dealt with the Bermuda Triangle in their stories included The Island (1980), Airport '77 (1977), The Bermuda Triangle (1978), Beyond the Bermuda Triangle (1975), Misterio en las Bermudas (1979) and the documentary The Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle (1978).
- #045
It is the only feature film based on Peter Benchley's story work that was not made by Universal Pictures.
- #046
The original concept was developed from the story of the shipwreck of the Constellation off Bermuda, which sank in 1942 carrying morphine ampoules along with other war cargo such as concrete and medicine. The Constellation sank after probably colliding with the wreck of the Montana, an American Civil War blockade runner that Peter Benchley described as having sunk on top of it.
- #047
This adaptation of a Peter Benchley novel features two actors who also appeared in the Jaws series, likewise adapted from a Peter Benchley novel. Robert Shaw appeared in the original Jaws (1975), and Louis Gossett Jr. appeared in Jaws 3-D (1983).
- #048
Marvel published a comic-book adaptation written by Doug Moench and drawn by Carmine Infantino.
- #049
Filming began in July 1976 and took place off Black Rock Point on Salt Island and near Peter Island in the British Virgin Islands, the actual site of the real RMS Rhone shipwreck. In August 1976, land-based filming was done in Bermuda. Further underwater filming took place on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
- #050
Jeff Bridges and Ryan O'Neal were announced for the role of David Sanders.
- #051
The cast includes Oscar winner Louis Gossett Jr. and Oscar nominees Robert Shaw and Nick Nolte.
- #052
Robert Shaw and Dick Anthony Williams share the same birthday (August 9).
- #053
Nick Nolte and Louis Gossett Jr. both appeared in Blue Chips (1994).
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