10 Movie Franchises That Embarrassed Their Creators

9. Jaws

Steven Spielberg's Jaws was adapted from Peter Benchley's 1974 novel of the same name, which was a commercial smash in its own right, selling more than 20 million copies worldwide.

The idea of a killer shark story came to Benchley after watching a news report about a 4,500 pound great white shark being caught off the coast of Long Island, and when Hollywood came a-knocking, he was invited to help co-write the film's script.

Yet in light of Jaws' incredible critical and commercial success, Benchley developed remorse for his depiction of sharks as aggressive, murderous animals, feeling that he played a part in the global uptick of shark hunting (which now numbers up to 100 million dead sharks per year, despite sharks almost never killing people).

He said, "What I now know, which wasn’t known when I wrote Jaws, is that there is no such thing as a rogue shark which develops a taste for human flesh...It provided cover for people who simply wanted to go out and kill sharks under the guise of somehow making people safer, which there’s no evidence that was the case at all."

In later life, Benchley devoted much of his time to promoting marine conservation and attempting to shift the public perception of sharks, and has even expressed regret over writing Jaws in the first place. "Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today," he said.

Yet his book and especially the movie he worked on crystallised the public's fear of sharks, one which still endures over 40 years later.