The Meg: Jason Statham's shark thriller likely to have $40 mn opening weekend at North American box-office

The Meg  earned $16.5 million on Friday and is expected to have a $40 million opening weekend collection at the North American box-office, reports Variety . The film also managed to earn $4 million in Thursday previews itself. [caption id=“attachment_4938671” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] A still from The Meg/Image from Twitter.[/caption] Jason Statham stars as Jonas Tyler, an expert deep sea rescue diver who is recruited by a Chinese oceanographer to protect the waters from a prehistoric 75-foot-long shark known as the Megalodon. Dean Georgaris and Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber have scripted the film, based on the 1997 book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Altan, while Jon Turteltaub is the director.

  However, The Meg has received mixed reviews and a 49 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes .  The Hollywood Reporter writes that this film will beat Tom Cruise’s  Mission: Impossible Fallout , currently in its third weekend, estimated to add $19-20 million. The film also stars Winston Chao, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Page Kennedy, Jessica McNamee, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Robert Taylor, Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai, and Masi Oka.