Fifty years ago, a young director named Steven Spielberg nearly saw his career sink beneath the waves while filming a movie that would go on to terrify generations and redefine Hollywood blockbusters. Now, in the heart of Los Angeles, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is marking the golden anniversary of Jaws with a sprawling, interactive exhibition that not only celebrates the film’s enduring legacy, but also gives visitors a taste of the chaos, camaraderie, and creativity that went into making it.
On September 10, 2025, the museum hosted a press preview for “Jaws: The Exhibition,” a show dedicated entirely to the 1975 classic. The exhibit officially opened to the public on Sunday, September 14, and is set to run through July 2026, according to the Associated Press and NPR. This is the first time the Academy Museum, which opened in 2021, has devoted a full exhibition to a single film—a testament to the cultural impact of Jaws and the ongoing fascination with its behind-the-scenes story.
“What they’ve put together here at this exhibition is just awesome,” Spielberg, now 78, told reporters after touring the exhibit. “Every room has the minutiae of how this picture got together.” Amy Homma, the museum’s director, described the initiative as “very historic” and announced plans for a full Spielberg retrospective in 2028.
The exhibition features more than 200 artifacts from the film, ranging from iconic props to rare production relics. Among the first things visitors see is a buoy from the film’s legendary opening scene—kept for half a century by Lynn Murphy, a marine mechanic who worked on the movie in Martha’s Vineyard. There’s also a dorsal fin prop that once struck terror in moviegoers, a real great white shark’s jaw used for reference (and seen on screen), and even a prosthetic head from the film’s most notorious jump-scare, which Spielberg admitted he kept “nowhere near my kids! I don’t want them traumatized by it.”
But the exhibit isn’t just about nostalgia—it’s immersive. Visitors can try their hand at playing John Williams’ famously ominous two-note theme on a keyboard, or use a dolly-zoom setup to recreate the unforgettable shot of Roy Scheider’s Chief Brody realizing doom is at hand. There’s a small, manually operated model of the mechanical sharks, giving guests a sense of the technical challenges that plagued the original crew. And at the center of it all is a recreation of the doomed fishing boat, the Orca, complete with the red leather booth where Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw compared scars in one of the film’s most memorable scenes.
Spielberg himself stepped into the booth during the press preview, playfully hiking his leg onto the table and reminiscing about the iconic moment. “God, this is a high table,” he laughed, before recalling the camaraderie and improvisation that marked the film’s long shoot. “We would just riff on the pages that we were going to shoot the next couple days, and then we’d go beyond the pages. Everybody would explore their own characters and [improvise], and then they’d leave and me and Carl Gottlieb would stay behind… and we’d cherrypick from the improv lines that would work in the existing structure.” One such gem: “It’s only an island if you look at it from the water.”
The making of Jaws was, by all accounts, a nightmare. Originally scheduled for 55 days, the shoot ballooned to 159, battered by bad weather, malfunctioning mechanical sharks, and the unpredictability of ocean tides. Spielberg, then just 26, faced mounting pressure from the studio and a crew desperate to go home. “I would have the crew come up to me and say, ‘Look, I have a wife and I’m supporting my mom and I’ve got kids in school. When are we going to get to go home?’ And it was the toughest thing on me, having to answer that question honestly by saying, ‘I don’t know. I can’t tell you.’”
Despite the chaos, the extended schedule had an unexpected upside: it gave the cast and crew time to deepen the story and their characters. The film’s most famous monologue—Quint’s harrowing account of surviving the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis—was the product of a complex collaboration. Screenwriter Howard Sackler originated the idea, John Milius expanded it into a ten-page speech, and Robert Shaw, himself a playwright, edited it down to five pages. The first attempt to film the scene went awry after Shaw asked for a drink and ended up too intoxicated to perform. Spielberg recalled, “I just went over to Robert, gave him a hug, and he thought he had finished the scene. And he said, ‘How was that?’ I said, ‘Robert, you were great. I’m going to wrap the company. It’s great. It’s all I need.’ And I sent Robert home.” Shaw, mortified the next morning, insisted on reshooting the scene—and delivered what became a legendary performance.
The production’s hardships left a mark on Spielberg. For years after the film’s release, he suffered nightmares and what he called “serious PTSD.” He found solace by sneaking onto the Orca boat, which Universal Studios had placed on its backlot, and sitting in the cabin until he felt ready to face the world again. When the studio destroyed the termite-riddled boat, Spielberg salvaged the steering wheel—now proudly displayed in the exhibition.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the exhibit is the presence of “Bruce,” the only surviving full-scale mechanical shark from the film. After the original sharks were discarded, a fourth was made from the same mold, hung at Universal Studios, and eventually ended up in a Southern California junkyard. Rediscovered in 2010, “junkyard Bruce” underwent a dramatic restoration in 2019 and now hangs, four stories high, in the museum’s glass atrium—a fitting final encounter for visitors who, like moviegoers in 1975, must wait until the very end to come face-to-face with the beast.
The exhibition is more than a celebration of a film; it’s a tribute to the resilience, ingenuity, and sheer luck that allowed Jaws to survive its troubled birth and become a cinematic legend. As Spielberg said, “The film certainly cost me a pound of flesh, but gave me a ton of career.” And as he told the restored shark, “Thank you for a robust career. Without you, you know, I don’t know what I would’ve—certainly my next three or four movies wouldn’t have been those same movies. Because Jaws gave me the chance to make anything I wanted to make.”
For fans and newcomers alike, “Jaws: The Exhibition” offers a rare chance to dive deep into the making of a masterpiece—and to appreciate the sweat, setbacks, and serendipity that lurk beneath every great story.