Ben Wheatley has promised to respect 'The Meg' in the second film in the franchise.

The 48-year-old director is set to helm 'Meg 2: The Trench', the shark thriller sequel, and has insisted he will not drastically depart from Jon Turteltaub's original flick.

Asked what audiences should expect from the movie, Ben told ComicBook.com: "A lot of it is respecting 'The Meg', and trying to make sure it's a great 'Meg' film.

"And as you can see from the movies I've made, they're not necessarily, it's not ... when you go and do 'Doctor Who', I don't completely change it because I wanted to do it. I didn't want to necessarily make it something completely different that nobody recognised, you know? So there's that element of back and forth."

Ben - whose previous movies include 'Free Fire' and 'Rebecca' - found it "unbelievable" when he was given the chance to helm a large-scale action film.

He explained: "It's an opportunity to do action on such an insanely large scale, that it's just unbelievable. From doing 'Free Fire', which was, I thought, was all my Christmases came at once in terms of action, this is just unbelievable.

"And just doing the storyboards for it, just thinking and going, 'Oh', it's just ... I feel a heavy responsibility for it, to make sure that it kind of delivers for all the big shark fans out there."

Meanwhile, Ben previously explained that he was more focused on emulating Daphne du Maurier's novel rather than Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 take on the story when working on 'Rebecca'.

He said: "It's not the Hitchcock film that haunts me. It's the du Maurier book. That's the shadow, that's the elephant in the room.

"You've been put in charge of bringing this book to the screen which is such a classic book and such a well-loved book. And that's where the tension is, because you're like, 'Oh my God, I don't want to screw this up.'"