Netflix, the nice white shark of streaming, is wading into Discovery’s and Nat Geo’s waters.
This vacation weekend, Nationwide Geographic Channel’s thirteenth annual SharkFest debuts, beating Discovery Channel’s thirty seventh Shark Week to the schedule. This summer time, the blood within the water isn’t from chum, relatively it’s from a whale of a brand new competitor: Netflix.
Netflix dominates just about all issues TV, so why ought to shark content material be any completely different? On June 30, Netflix premiered its documentary Shark Whisperer, which follows Ocean Ramsey in her distinctive (and controversial — and viral) method to marine conservation: swimming freely with gigantic sharks for hours on finish. Shark Whisperer, the most recent underwater documentary movie from James Reed, the Oscar-winning director of My Octopus Trainer, has treaded water amongst Netflix’s high 10 movies every day since.
Shark Whisperer shouldn’t be Netflix’s solely shark programming of the summer time — although will probably be all of TV’s standout shark program of the summer time — it’s not even Netflix’s solely shark programming of the week.
On July 4, Netflix debuted new competitors sequence All of the Sharks. It’s not the sharks themselves competing — this isn’t Shark Week — All of the Sharks options 4 groups of shark specialists making an attempt to {photograph} essentially the most shark sorts inside an allotted variety of days. The winners get $50,000 for his or her chosen marine charity.
By the point SharkFest premieres, America may be all sharked out. Two weeks in the past marked the 50-year anniversary of Jaws (June 20, 1975) — for weeks now we’ve had a boatload of content material in regards to the most well-known piece of shark programming ever. How rather more can one take? Nat Geo is hoping that reply is “25 hours extra.”
SharkFest kicks off with Sharks Up Shut With Bertie Gregory on July 5 and concludes with Shark Quest: Hunt for the Apex Predator on July 13. However the featured program of SharkFest 2025 is… extra Jaws.
To be honest, Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story is, nicely, the definitive inside story. It’s licensed by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Leisure and options “uncommon archival footage and interviews with acclaimed Hollywood administrators, high shark scientists and conservationists,” per Nat Geo. It additionally options Spielberg himself, the person who ruined nice white sharks for everyone on the planet not named Ocean Ramsey.
Jaws, from left: Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, 1975.
Courtesy Everett Assortment
July 10’s Jaws @ 50 “uncovers the behind-the-scenes chaos and the way the movie launched the summer time blockbuster, impressed a brand new wave of filmmakers, and paved the way in which for shark conservation that continues as we speak,” Nat Geo continued. (Ramsey would possibly take problem with any concept that Jaws aided shark conservation.)
So, it’s that and about 23 hours of exhibits about actual sharks.
As for Ramsey, nicely, she’s seen sufficient Jaws — and Jaws-inspired programming — to final a Greenland shark’s lifetime. (Google it.)
“It doesn’t actually assist that a number of mainstream, conventional media has dramatized and sensationalized sharks as a result of Jaws was, you recognize, a Hollywood-blockbuster type of movie,” Ramsey instructed THR of her motivation to make Shark Whisperer. “So I used to be simply actually grateful to work with a recent platform like Netflix that has a worldwide attain. They’re keen to really showcase actuality and present sharks on a deeper stage and speak about not simply analysis, however their habits within the water.”
The worldwide attain of Netflix is essential right here. Whereas shark fin soup is primarily consumed in China, individuals in nations everywhere in the world are harvesting (learn: killing sharks and reducing off their fins) their waters to fulfill that demand.
SharkFest 2025 truly has extra hours programmed than Shark Week 2025 (21 hours). Nat Geo says final 12 months’s SharkFest racked up greater than 69 million hours of viewing, inclusive of streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
“SharkFest places sharks the place they belong — on the heart of each story. We work hand-in-fin with main specialists to seize breakthrough analysis, uncommon behaviors and untold views, pairing their insights with beautiful visuals of the ocean’s magnificence,” Janet Han Vissering, svp of improvement and manufacturing, instructed THR for this story. “The result’s a nice white shark-sized programming occasion guided by science, not sensationalism, dispelling outdated myths, exploring the reality behind the important function they play within the well being of our oceans. We shed a brand new mild on these misunderstood predators whereas delivering recent thrills 12 months after 12 months.”
(And I believed I made too many shark puns on this story.)
Shark Week stays culturally related, because of robust branding and a 24-year first-mover benefit. Warner Bros. Discovery says the final Shark Week reached 25 million complete viewers throughout Discovery Channel, Discovery+ and Max. Amongst adults 25-54, Shark Week 2024 claimed seven of Nielsen’s Prime 10 spots that week throughout ad-supported cable, excluding information and sports activities.
Underwater Janelle VanRuiten Feeding Shark on Dancing with Sharks throughout Shark Week 2025.
Terence Patrick/Courtesy of Discovery Channel
The important thing to Shark Week’s longevity and recognition is a lighter take a look at the largest, toothiest fish. (Don’t fact-check me on that.) Consider SharkFest as like Marine Biology (which makes Shark Whisperer AP Marine Bio) and Shark Week like having a substitute instructor in health club class.
Shark Week is extra liable to the sensationalism that Ramsey rails in opposition to (my commentary, not hers). And Ramsey says it’s “difficult for the general public to distinguish” between good and unhealthy shark programming. A few of the hottest stuff exploits “the uncommon opposed interactions” between man and shark. (This commentary is hers, however like mine within the prior sentence, is objectively appropriate.) Ramsey says she has been requested to take part on a few of these exhibits and has “walked away” when her considerations about message “fell on deaf ears.”
Ramsey didn’t single out a community or program by identify; she didn’t wish to.
“I wish to work with everybody. I’m very collaborative,” she mentioned. “I simply wish to try to assist encourage individuals in direction of transferring in direction of addressing conservation points and being extra practical and delicate to the tone.”
Like, you recognize, Shark Whisperer.
Let’s dive deeper (although not as deep as Ramsey, who can maintain her breath for six and a half minutes) into the approaching weeks’ basic-cable shark lineup.
Shark Week 2025 premieres with Dancing With Sharks (8 p.m. ET/PT), hosted by former Dancing With the Stars host Tom Bergeron. Dancing with Sharks has 5 divers competing to place collectively an incredible underwater routine — with sharks, in fact.
“From hammerheads to tigers and nurse sharks, every shark has its personal signature dance strikes,” the Dancing With Sharks logline reads. “On the finish of the present, a winner is topped — if all of the opponents make it that far.”
Because the identify lays out, a complete week of (extra) shark programming follows, totaling 21 hours in all. Highlights embrace Nice White Intercourse Battle (July 21 at 8 p.m. ET/PT), which is a bit much less thrilling (and bizarre) than it would first learn.
“In a Shark Week first, female and male nice white sharks compete in a sequence of challenges to find out which intercourse is the superior predator within the waters off the coast of New Zealand,” per the press launch.
OK, so possibly it ought to have been titled Nice White Battle of the Sexes and never, nicely, what it is named.
After which there’s my private favourite, Jaws vs Mega Croc (9 p.m. ET/PT).
“Utilizing knowledge gathered in new experiments, Tristan Guttridge, Rosie Moore and Dr. Sora Kim assemble a CGI combat to the demise between two of the largest and baddest apex predators within the water — the Nice White Shark and Nile Crocodile,” the logline says.
I say: Hell sure.
However what do the oddsmakers at BetOnline say? After THR offered the bookies with the above title and logline, they selected shark because the heavy favourite (-500) with the underdog undercroc a protracted shot at +350, with the famous caveat that water depth might transfer these odds considerably. We’d take Nile Crocodile all day at that line, nevertheless it’s not prop they’re truly keen to put up.