I think, and I could be very wrong about this, but Veerhoven is on record as having not ever even read the book. That would explain why the two are so different.

I was blown away by how bad JAWS is. The writing, the actual story line, the characters; everything about that book is disgustingly bad. I honestly do not know who wrote the screenplay to the movie, but they deserve all the praise in the world.

I would wholeheartedly disagree with Jurassic Park. As phenomenal as Spielberg made JAWS, he made Jurassic Park such a soft movie. The book is great and would do fantastically as a series on HBO or something. But hey, agree to disagree.