Meg: Generations

Some 30 years before the present-day action of Alten’s predictable sixth thriller centered on rapacious prehistoric creatures (after 2016’s Meg: Nightstalkers), Navy Cmdr. Jonas Taylor encountered a Megalodon, a humongous shark believed long extinct. After officials dismissed his account, Taylor left the navy and retrained as a paleobiologist. Eventually, he captured a Megalodon pup, which led to the creation of “a monster shark cottage industry.” The latest iteration is a marine park in Dubai, featuring other dangerous living fossils, which somehow survived in a sea beneath the Mariana Trench. When one such animal, a monstrous whale, escapes the tanker it’s being transferred in, the vessel sinks, drowning most of its human occupants. A Liopleurodon, a giant, crocodile-like marine reptile, which was intended to be displayed in Dubai, also gets away. As if efforts to recapture the beasts and minimize carnage aren’t enough, Alten tosses in a miraculous cancer cure subplot, which involves Taylor, whose wife has the disease. Series fans who won’t mind more of the same will be pleased. Agent: Danny Baror, Baror International. (June)