There aren’t any sharks on the New York City set of Sharknado 2. Of course there aren’t—movie monsters, especially those that swirl up in a tornado, are made on computers. The only fishy thing in sight on this cold February day is a lone shark tooth hanging off Ian Ziering’s necklace. “You know, ’cause of what happened in the last movie,” he says. Ziering, 50, who’s best known for playing the curly-haired jock Steve Sanders on the original Beverly Hills, 90210, is the hero of Syfy’s Sharknado franchise, the second of which premieres on July 30. In the first installment, which aired last July, Ziering’s character rid the world of a menacing tornado of sharks. But, as they say, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water …
In the scene that’s filming today, Ziering is supposed to be scavenging the streets of Manhattan for weapons before his final shark battle. So far, all he’s done is emerge from a restaurant with a bunch of knives and pizza slicers. He then meets his co-star, former Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath, who contributes a grocery bag full of Super Soakers. They compare weapons, look up at the sky, and frown. A stagehand leans over and explains they’re pretending to gaze at the sharks. “It’s so brilliant!” says the director, Anthony Ferrante, after the second take.
The average budget for a Syfy film is about $1.5 million, and though the network says Sharknado 2 ran a bit higher (it won’t disclose the actual figure), it still cost a tenth of a typical action movie. The film’s extras do their own makeup, the catering tent has only weak coffee and sad-looking pastries, and the stars are trailerless—McGrath gets so cold between takes that he shoves hand warmers in his mittens. The movie takes place in the summer, so when it starts snowing in the middle of a scene, “we just wrote it into the script that the weird weather is caused by the sharknado,” Ferrante laughs.
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According to Nielsen (NLSN), only 1.5 million people watched the first Sharknado, which is standard for most Syfy movies. But for reasons that no one fully understands, the film became a social media phenomenon. At one point during the broadcast, an estimated 5,000 people were tweeting about it every minute. ESPN’s (DIS) official Twitter (TWTR) account asked the San Jose Sharks to change their name, Red Cross Oklahoma promised to respond to all sharknado alerts, and everyone from Richard Dreyfuss to Mia Farrow was commenting along with the onscreen insanity. The network capitalized on the buzz with repeat viewings, which got the audience up to 2.1 million on the third try. Within a month, Regal Entertainment Group (RGC) was showing the film in 200 of its theaters across the country. As comedian Patton Oswalt put it, “Based on the Twitter attention it got, Sharknado is our Arab Spring.”
Syfy, which is owned by NBCUniversal (CMCSA), has been around since 1992 and has a programming list that includes fantasy, horror, paranormal, mystery, and reality TV. In between its original series—such as Defiance, also an immersive online game—the network likes to air supercheesy flicks. It used to buy the rights to air preexisting B movies from studios; in 2002 Syfy started making them itself. “We did it because we had to. We couldn’t find anything to buy,” says Thomas Vitale, Syfy’s executive vice president for programming and original movies. “The genre market had completely dried up.” Syfy reached out to legends such as Roger Corman, the independent director and producer who’s made more than 400 films, including The Little Shop of Horrors and The Fast and the Furious (the original, from 1955). Corman is now one of Syfy’s top producers, having given it Dinocroc, Sharktopus, Dinoshark, Dinoshark vs. Supergator, and this summer’s Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda, all of which he says are separate movies with completely different plots. “When our market went away, Syfy really picked up the slack,” Corman says. The network now airs two original movies a month and enlists several production companies and directors, including Ferrante, who had been making low-budget horror movies until getting his big Sharknado break.
