In June 2026, Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh launched “Production 02074.” It is a dedicated mobile application designed as an interactive, deep-dive tribute to the making of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster Jaws. The platform abandons traditional documentary formats in favor of an immersive digital archive. Users navigate the notoriously chaotic 159-day shoot through daily call sheets, script revisions, and mechanical shark schematics. It is a masterclass in film history, packaged for the modern digital ecosystem. If users want to know how modern blockbuster cinema was born, this app provides the exact, day-by-day blueprint.

The story of Jaws is the foundational myth of modern Hollywood. It is the story of a twenty-seven-year-old director taking a camera crew onto the open ocean.

It is the story of a mechanical shark that sank. It is the story of a budget that doubled. It is the story of a production schedule that spiraled from 55 days to 159 days.

For decades, film students have studied this shoot. Documentaries have covered it. Books have detailed it. But Soderbergh recognized a limitation in those passive formats. A linear documentary cannot capture the multidimensional chaos of a film set falling apart.

Software can.

The Architecture of ‘Production 02074’

The app takes its name from the official Universal Pictures production code assigned to the film in 1974. The interface does not look like a streaming service. It looks like a production manager’s binder.

When users open the app, they are greeted with a calendar. The dates run from May 2, 1974, to October 6, 1974. These are the exact dates the crew spent on Martha’s Vineyard.

Users can tap on any specific day. The app then populates the screen with the exact data from that 24-hour period.

If a user taps on July 25, they see the call sheet. They see the weather report. They see the frantic notes from producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown. They see the revised script pages that screenwriter Carl Gottlieb typed up the night before over dinner with actors Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw.

It is a forensic reconstruction of cinematic survival.

Soderbergh has always been obsessed with the mechanics of process. He is a director who operates his own camera. He edits his own films under the pseudonym Mary Ann Bernard. He understands that directing is not just about artistic vision. It is about logistics. It is about moving trucks, feeding crews, and fighting the weather.

This app forces the user to experience the logistics of Jaws in real-time.

A History of Cinematic Deconstruction

This project did not emerge from a vacuum. Soderbergh has spent the last decade using digital platforms to deconstruct film history.

On his website, Extension 765, he previously released a black-and-white, silent recut of Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. He did this to force viewers to focus entirely on Spielberg’s staging and blocking, stripped of dialogue and color.

He mashed up Alfred Hitchcock’s original Psycho with Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake. He recut Michael Cimino’s infamous box-office disaster Heaven’s Gate. He has consistently used his platform to teach visual literacy.

But “Production 02074” represents a massive escalation. It moves from passive video editing to active software engineering.

The app format allows Soderbergh to overlay different elements of the production. A user can listen to an audio interview with cinematographer Bill Butler while simultaneously scrolling through his lighting diagrams. They can watch the mechanical shark, affectionately named “Bruce” after Spielberg’s lawyer, fail in a 3D-rendered simulation.

The Open Ocean Experiment

To understand why Soderbergh chose Jaws for this treatment, one must understand the context of 1974 Hollywood.

Before Jaws, studios did not shoot major feature films on the open ocean. If a script called for a boat at sea, the studio shot it in a massive water tank on a backlot. The horizon was painted on a backdrop. The water was controlled. The elements were tamed.

Spielberg refused the tank. He wanted the audience to see the real Atlantic Ocean rolling behind the actors. He wanted the realism of Martha’s Vineyard.

Universal Studios executives Sid Sheinberg and Lew Wasserman approved a budget of $4 million. The shoot was scheduled for 55 days.

The ocean immediately destroyed those plans.

Saltwater corroded the pneumatic hoses inside the mechanical shark. Tides pushed the boats out of frame. Sailboats drifted into the background, ruining shots. The weather changed by the hour, destroying visual continuity.

The budget ballooned to $9 million. The schedule stretched into autumn.

Through the app, users can track this financial and temporal bleed. Soderbergh includes a digital budget tracker. As users advance through the calendar, they watch the $4 million budget evaporate. They see the memos from Universal demanding Spielberg return to Los Angeles.

They see a young director fighting for his career.

The Verna Fields Factor

One of the most robust sections of “Production 02074” is dedicated to the editing process. Soderbergh, an editor himself, places heavy emphasis on Verna Fields.

Fields was the legendary film editor who cut Jaws. During the production, she set up an editing room in a pool house on Martha’s Vineyard. As Spielberg shot footage on the water, he would bring the film reels back to Fields.

Because the mechanical shark rarely worked, Spielberg could not show the monster. He had to imply it. He used floating yellow barrels. He used John Williams’ iconic two-note musical motif. He used subjective camera angles, shooting from the shark’s point of view beneath the water.

This was not a stylistic choice. It was a mechanical necessity.

Soderbergh’s app visualizes this pivot. It includes a timeline slider. Users can see the original storyboards, which featured the shark heavily in the first act. Then, they can slide the timeline forward to see the revised storyboards, where the shark is erased and replaced by the camera’s perspective.

It shows how a catastrophic mechanical failure birthed the greatest suspense techniques since Hitchcock.

Fields won an Academy Award for her work. The app makes it explicitly clear why she earned it.

The Evolution of the ‘Making-Of’ Format

The release of “Production 02074” in 2026 signals a fundamental shift in how the entertainment industry handles its own history.

In the early 2000s, the DVD boom created a massive market for behind-the-scenes documentaries. Fans devoured audio commentaries and deleted scenes. But as physical media declined, streaming services rarely prioritized these extras. The archives were locked away.

Soderbergh has bypassed the streaming platforms entirely. By building a standalone app, he has created a new revenue stream and a new distribution model for film scholarship.

The app is not a passive viewing experience. It requires engagement. It asks the user to act as a digital archaeologist, sifting through the wreckage of a troubled production to find the moments of genius.

The Legacy of the Shark

When Jaws finally premiered in the summer of 1975, it changed the world. It became the first film to gross over $100 million at the domestic box office. It invented the summer blockbuster model. It changed how films were marketed, relying heavily on national television advertising.

But Soderbergh’s app is not interested in the release. It is entirely focused on the creation.

It is a tribute to the laborers. The grips who held the cameras on pitching boats. The local fishermen who navigated the treacherous currents of Nantucket Sound. The actors who spent days soaking wet, freezing in the October wind.

It strips away the myth of the solitary genius director. It reveals filmmaking for what it truly is. A desperate, collaborative war against time, money, and physics.

Soderbergh has built a monument to that war.

Historians log in. Filmmakers take notes. Audiences explore. Survival.