INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Shark Week 2015’s First Promo Is Here, And It’s ‘Jawsome’

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 10:25 PST, Apr 23, 2015

Even though 2015’s installment of Shark Week won’t debut for another three months, Discovery is already beginning its advertising campaign for the wildly popular event, which is set to be revamped this year into a much larger format.

Shark Week officially kicks off on July 5, but that has hardly stopped Discovery from building excitement in advance, as Entertainment Weekly reports. The first promo clip for the event has been released, depicting joyous swimmers, surfers, and divers sharing the water with schools of sharks, floating above or racing away from the predators. Set to the tune of It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year (with the addition of some shark-centric lyrics), the clip also features a surprise appearance by singer Billy Idol, who declares his love of Shark Week at the end of the 30-second-spot by calling it “Jawsome.”

Discovery has declared 2015 to be the “Summer of the Shark,” as the International Business Times notes, and while Shark Week will begin sooner than ever, it will also last longer than any other time in its 28-year-long history. Following a full week-long-event in July, Discovery will air a second round of Shark Week specials in August. Programming will include sequels to some of the event’s most popular shows, including Air Jaws and Great White Serial Killer, while Shark Week’s first expedition to Cuba will also be revealed.

Notably lacking will be the hyperbolic specials that have led to widespread criticism of Discovery and Shark Week in recent years. As the Inquisitr previously reported, a series of programs that postulated that the Megalodon shark may still exist, as well as several that examined the legend of a massive shark called the Submarine, garnered widespread condemnation from researchers. Earlier this year, Rich Ross, Discovery’s president, asserted that the network will forgo the misleading shows in this year’s Shark Week, an admission that was greeted with guarded positivity from the scientific community.

Last year, Discovery was also widely criticized for filming and releasing a hoaxed video which appeared to show a shark swimming in Lake Ontario, as part of a viral marketing campaign for Shark Week.

Whether or not the network truly renounces the unscientific aspects of the event, the 2015 edition of Shark Week promises to be one of the most exciting and highly anticipated of the last three decades.

[Image: Discovery via Entertainment Weekly]

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