Netflix, the good 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 season, 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 totally different? On June 30, Netflix premiered its documentary Shark Whisperer, which follows Ocean Ramsey in her distinctive (and controversial — and viral) strategy 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 Instructor, has treaded water amongst Netflix’s prime 10 movies every day since.
Shark Whisperer will not be Netflix’s solely shark programming of the summer season — although will probably be all of TV’s standout shark program of the summer season — 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 consultants making an attempt to {photograph} probably 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 truthful, Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story is, properly, the definitive inside story. It’s approved by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Leisure and options “uncommon archival footage and interviews with acclaimed Hollywood administrators, prime 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 season blockbuster, impressed a brand new wave of filmmakers, and paved the best way for shark conservation that continues right now,” Nat Geo continued. (Ramsey would possibly take difficulty with any concept that Jaws aided shark conservation.)
So, it’s that and about 23 hours of exhibits about actual sharks.
As for Ramsey, properly, she’s seen sufficient Jaws — and Jaws-inspired programming — to final a Greenland shark’s lifetime. (Google it.)
“It doesn’t actually assist that numerous mainstream, conventional media has dramatized and sensationalized sharks as a result of Jaws was, you realize, a Hollywood-blockbuster sort of movie,” Ramsey informed THR of her motivation to make Shark Whisperer. “So I used to be simply actually grateful to work with a contemporary platform like Netflix that has a world attain. They’re keen to really showcase actuality and present sharks on a deeper stage and discuss 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 all around the world are harvesting (learn: killing sharks and reducing off their fins) their waters to satisfy that demand.
SharkFest 2025 really has extra hours programmed than Shark Week 2025 (21 hours). Nat Geo says final yr’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 consultants 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 growth and manufacturing, informed THR for this story. “The result’s a nice white shark-sized programming occasion guided by science, not sensationalism, dispelling previous myths, exploring the reality behind the crucial position they play within the well being of our oceans. We shed a brand new gentle on these misunderstood predators whereas delivering contemporary thrills yr after yr.”
(And I believed I made too many shark puns on this story.)
Shark Week stays culturally related, due to 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 most important, 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 trainer in gymnasium class.
Shark Week is extra vulnerable to the sensationalism that Ramsey rails towards (my commentary, not hers). And Ramsey says it’s “difficult for the general public to distinguish” between good and dangerous shark programming. A number 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 right.) 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 need to.
“I need to work with everybody. I’m very collaborative,” she stated. “I simply need to attempt 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 realize, 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 a tremendous 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 rivals 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 peculiar) than it’d 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 perhaps it ought to have been titled Nice White Battle of the Sexes and never, properly, what it is named.
After which there’s my private favourite, Jaws vs Mega Croc (9 p.m. ET/PT).
“Utilizing information gathered in new experiments, Tristan Guttridge, Rosie Moore and Dr. Sora Kim assemble a CGI struggle to the dying between two of the most important 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 supplied the bookies with the above title and logline, they selected shark because the heavy favourite (-500) with the underdog undercroc an extended 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, however it’s not prop they’re really keen to put up.