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Reportedly, Scheider agreed to make Blue Thunder (1983) in order to ensure that he was definitely and contractually unavailable for this film.
David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck, producers of the first two films, originally pitched this as a spoof, based on a suggestion by Matty Simmons and John Hughes. Titled "National Lampoon's Jaws 3, People 0", it was about a movie studio trying to make a second sequel to Jaws (1975). It opened with author Peter Benchley being eaten in his pool by a shark.
Screenwriter Richard Matheson claimed that the film was bedeviled by script doctors who ruined the central premise of a Great White shark swimming upstream and becoming trapped in a lake.
This film was the first shot on Arriflex's single-camera ArriVision 3-D system. However, the system was not actually ready for use until a week into production. During the wait, the Optimax and StereoVision 3-D systems were used. All of the footage from the Optimax system was deemed unusable and thrown out (that system was prone to serious misalignment issues), while StereoVision was deemed acceptable enough that it continued to be used for second unit work through the entire production. ArriVision footage makes up the bulk of the final film, with the earliest shot and second unit scenes shot in StereoVision, and miniatures and effects shot with a two-camera beam-splitter system, similar to later digital 3-D setups.
The filmmakers initially planned to have very few "pop-out" effects where objects extend beyond the screen in 3-D. Studio executives ultimately pressured them to include more, worried that audiences would leave disappointed and spread bad word-of-mouth if the 3-D were used mainly for depth.
This is the first major film to use visual effects shots composited on video equipment instead of via optical film printing. Originally, this was to be used for all of the composite shots in the movie, and the vast majority of them were completed via this process by Private Stock Effects. This method proved to be much quicker and more flexible than traditional film printing. However, because the video system being used was of relatively low resolution, the resulting images looked soft. Because the visual effects shots were underwater, this was initially deemed acceptable. However, Producer Alan Landsburg changed his mind at the last minute and ordered the work re-done in the traditional film process by Praxis Film Works. The time crunch meant over two-thirds of the planned composite shots were cut from the movie, many more were simplified to make them easier and quicker to complete via optical printing, and a handful of unfinished shots showing blank greenscreens were left in the finished film. Only three or four video-composited shots remain in the final cut.
In a later interview, Dennis Quaid referred to this movie as "I was in Jaws what?" He further elaborated that he hated making this film and had been high on drugs throughout shooting, stating, "There is not one frame of 'Jaws 3' you see me in that I wasn't coked out of my mind."
The dolphin Sandy is actually a male dolphin named Capricorn. He was born in 1972 and you can still go to Discovery Cove in Orlando, Florida and swim with him.
