FILM · 2016 · USA
The Shallows
24 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
24 Interesting Facts About The Shallows
Interesting Facts (19)
- #001
Blake Lively accidentally hit her face on a buoy while filming the film's climactic ending, which made her nose bleed. The injury seen in the film and Lively's reaction to it are real. The blow to the face and the bloody nose were kept in the final cut and can be seen at the climax of the ending.
- #002
Steven Seagull's real name is Sully, and he (as of now) lives at a seagull sanctuary in Australia. Two extra seagulls were used to portray Steven Seagull. Producer Matti Leshem added: "They were all good but not nearly as good as him. Peggy was the vocal one, a very screechy bird. Gaviota (which means seagull in Spanish), I think she's almost 30 (Steven is estimated to be 15 or 20). As an actor, the hardest thing about Sully is that seagulls are quite clean. They groom themselves a lot, so the blood on Sully is obviously fake blood. He kept wanting to clean it off, so we had to deal with that."
- #003
The crab Nancy crushes under a rock is CGI, but the crushed crab she tries to eat is real. As director Jaume Collet-Serra noted, Blake Lively's disgusted reactions are genuine: "We're not allowed to hurt any animals, so there were no live crabs, but in the mornings we sent our art department to the beach to find crabs that had died naturally, so there are a few in there."
- #004
Blake Lively drew partly on her husband Ryan Reynolds's work in the similarly minimalist film Buried (2010), saying: "That was one of the reasons I wanted to take this on so much, because I know how hard it was for him and how rewarding it was."
- #005
- #006
- #007
The first script had Blake Lively talking to the seagull much more, and scenes featuring such interaction were shot; in the end, however, director Jaume Collet-Serra decided on a less-is-more approach, telling Yahoo: "… we didn't want her to be like Snow White talking to animals; when you see the predicament she's in, you understand her, you don't need her to explain everything to a seagull!"
- #008
- #009
- #010
Asked in an interview whether a sequel might be possible given the film's unexpected box-office success, director Jaume Collet-Sera said he does not believe in sequels and can only make original work. This is an ironic statement considering he began his directing career with a remake (House of Wax) and a sequel (Goal II: Living the Dream).
- #011
- #012
- #013
Blake Lively came up with the name "Steven Seagull." Producer Matti Leshem noted: "She really formed her own relationship with Sully. There's a moment in the film where she repairs Sully's broken wing and the bird actually bites her. I'd say the relationship is complicated in that there's so much love there and they really bond, but there were moments where you could see Sully genuinely attack. Obviously Sully was trying to help her, but I think the complexity between them and the deep emotional connection is what makes this film great."
- #014
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- #019
Production Story (1)
Behind the Scenes (3)
- #021
The crew had to bike to the set every morning. Producer Mattie Leshem added: "We weren't allowed to have many vehicles on the island, so basically everyone had to bike to set every morning. But we were going in the dark because we needed all the daylight to shoot. To get close to the set we had to get off our bikes and walk along the beach, because there was a population of Shearwaters and it's an endangered species and 20,000 of them were nesting while we were shooting. They're incredibly fast in the wind but on the ground they're like drunk ducks, so if you're on a bike you can easily run them over."
- #022
- #023
In Blake Lively's surfing scenes, some digital effects were used to overcome the waves; the production company made use of face-replacement techniques handled by Lola VFX (known for its face-replacement work on The Social Network (2010) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)). Anderson said they realized fairly quickly that "they have their own special methodology for doing face work, but the surfing shots are fraught with their own difficulties. They scanned Blake and captured her performances with their equipment, and the setups then had to transfer that onto a 3D version of Blake's face that was tracked, reanimated and replaced the faces of the stunt doubles."
Deeper Meaning (1)
- #024
The shark had multiple personalities, and although one digital shark became Blake Lively's main antagonist, the producers deliberately created several different shark "stages." VFX supervisor Anderson explained: "The first naturalist shark represents the fact that a shark goes into a feeding state before becoming a more directed shark during Nancy's buoy sequence, leading to the more directed and stylized action of the flare sequence, culminating in Nancy being in the water and her finale with the shark. Throughout all the shots, real sharks were used to capture that sense of balance, from the simplicity of a fin to the water curve of a shark's swim, from gill reactions to the movement of the 'lips' and the overall sense of mass. All of this was guided by reality, but controlled by animators following Jaume's wishes for each scene."
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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