The month of July may be famous for festive events: the Fabulous Fourth, National Ice Cream Month, France’s celebratory Bastille Day and even Harry Potter’s birthday. But National Geographic, Disney+ and Hulu are deep diving into a national shark month with a series of close encounters with these behemoths of the deep.

Ever since the massive predator took a bite out of the Orca in “Jaws,” people have been fascinated by these voracious creatures.

And BAFTA-winning cinematographer and National Geographic explorer Bertie Gregory is no different. Cruising the placid Pacific waters off Mexico, he’s searching the distinctive and elusive hammerhead shark. Titled “Hammerhead Sharks Up Close with Bertie Gregory,” the mission is streaming now on Disney+ and Hulu.

Gregory is no stranger to perilous places. “The most ambitious shoot we went on was for the Antarctic episode, and we went to try and film the biggest gathering of fin whales ever,” he recalled.

“And we spent six weeks on a sailboat. We had to cross the Drake Passage, one of the roughest parts of oceans on the planet. We spent six weeks there, and we were on a 75-foot sailboat. We had drones. We had diving equipment. We had gyro-stabilized cameras. We were really throwing the kitchen sink at these adventures.”

But the kitchen sink was no help when Gregory discovered a crocodile in his camping cot in Zambia.

“ I screamed. And I ran out of the room and went to get one of our guides and said, ‘Yeah, Adrian, dude, there's a crocodile in my bed. Can you come and sort it out?’ And during the shoot, we played loads of practical jokes on each other, so I definitely suffered from crying wolf or crying crocodile.

“And it took about 10 minutes for me to convince him that actually this was an actual problem and could he come help? And he comes reluctantly to my room, and he opens the door. The door creaks open and he turns the lights on.

“And he then comes flying out of my room past me and goes, ‘Bertie, there's a crocodile in your bed!’ I'm like, ‘I know. I came to tell you that.’ And anyway, we then went into the room, and at which point, the crocodile started death-rolling which is how they kill their prey. They grab their prey and then they start rolling really violently. And it managed to death-roll itself into the mosquito net that was hanging over my bed, so it was just a hot mess,” he said.

“And Adrian's very good at dealing with difficult situations. And he actually managed to get a towel on this crocodile's head. And together, we managed to sort of grab it, and Adrian picked it up and walked it out to the river.

“And as he was walking out my door, it started going (makes honking noise). And I was like, ‘Oh, Adrian, what does that mean?’ He's like, ‘Oh, this is actually a juvenile. That's the distress call. He's just calling mum.’”

So there’s no calling Mum among the other “SharkFest” adventures on this series, including the search for the “World’s Biggest Mako” in the waters off New Zealand.

Aided by a local fisherman, the team of scientists and a cinematographer discover a coven of the giant sharks. While the mako may be an endangered species in other parts of the world, here they may be making a comeback.

Also on the docket is “Attack of the Samurai Sharks” in which a 3,000-year-old skeleton in Japan is found to have curious slice marks on his body. Could they have been caused by a shark? Shark experts Alyssa White, Gavin Naylor, Kirin Sekito and Masato Nakatsukasa ponder the evidence.

The seas surrounding a remote island in the South Pacific seem to be the country club for a variety of sharks including the dusky, the tiger and the Galapagos sharks. Why are they congregating in such big numbers in this secluded site is the subject of “Shark Island Showdown.”

"Great White Gauntlet” isn’t Ahab in search of Moby Dick, but a team of experts trying to discover why there’s a massive rally of great white sharks off the coast of Australia.

Gregory’s own fascination with wildlife began when he was a kid. “I was about 12 or 13, and I lived in the southwest of England near a city called Reading. And it definitely wasn’t a wild place, but I was near farmland, and I made friends with the farmer, and he let me explore his land.

“And it was things like deer and kingfishers and foxes and badgers and maybe not the most, I guess they’re not polar bears, they’re not lions. But, to me, the excitement that I got from getting close to those animals, that same excitement I get from being with a fox or a badger, near to where I live, as I do with a polar bear. I just can’t get enough of it.”

SpongeBob celebrates

Tuesday, July 14, has been declared “SpongeBob Day” by Nickelodeon with a flurry of favorite episodes starring the yellow fellow on the network and all-day marathons on Nicktoons, Nick Pluto and Nick.com.

Tom Kenny voices the silly sponge and will host an event on TikTok Live for the first time on Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET. He’ll share some behind-the-scenes information and reveal three alternate endings to a favorite episode, “Shanghaied.”

Kenny tells me he was influenced by some of the innovators in the voice-over industry. “As a kid I was always very aware from a really early age that there must be adult human beings who provided the voices for these characters in these cartoons that I loved,” he says.

“I saw Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) on ‘The Mike Douglas Show’ when I was a kid, also an aunt gave me a bunch of Stan Freberg LPs that had Daws Butler (Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw) and June Foray (Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale).

“I remember there was a thumbnail photo of the cast and a list of their credits. That underscored the thought I’d had: Seems like this is a job that a person could have. I was lucky enough to break into voice-over when there was a kind of a renaissance of funny animation going on in the post ‘Ren & Stimpy’ era. Before that they were toy tie-ins like G.I. Joe, Care Bears, Transformers. They were basically tie-ins to existing toy lines and didn’t have that much to do with Looney Tunes and Max Fleisher cartoons that I was almost obsessed with as a kid and as an adult.”

Ben Stiller produces and co-stars in new film

Ben Stiller produces and co-stars in “The Dink” opening July 24. Stiller grew up the child of performers Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara who had a comedy routine that pushed them into the limelight. “I lived it, I didn't have to study it,” he says of show business.

“I grew up around it. We were taken on the road, would be in all the places. I never questioned it from a very early age; knew it was much more interesting and exciting for me than going to school. It was much more fun. I didn't want to be doing homework I wanted to be hanging out on set with my parents. I constantly got report cards that said, ‘Ben has a lot of potential if he'd just apply himself.’ And I was applying myself to other things.”

Actress has no plan B

Gretchen Mol plays the mother of an autistic girl in the new film “Horsegirls,” arriving in theaters Friday, July 17. When her mother’s illness returns, her daughter discovers the world of hobby-horsing and sets about to prove her independence.

Mol says she became an actress because she had only one goal in mind. “I didn't have any other thing that drew me, so I didn't have any other options, and I haven't set a plan B,” she says.

“I remember my father had this dear friend who was a lawyer and he said to me when I was quite young and having a dream — going to acting school, ‘Well, what's your plan B?’ And I thought he probably uses that line on his own children. But I hadn't heard that from my parents and I'm so grateful it wasn't me. I always was pretty convinced that if I had a plan B then plan A wouldn't happen. So it's frustrating as difficult as this business can be. Whenever I get to do the job, I'm always so I'm grateful that I chose this thing.”

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