When it comes to B-Grade, so-bad-its-good films, no current film series is bigger than Sharknado. Now on its sixth (sixth!) instalment, the franchise about fish-related weather phenomena has become both a huge hit and a household name, despite not actually being good at all.
Mmm, sharks.
In the lead-up to the US release of The Last Sharknado – which, by the way, we don’t believe will be the last one for a second – producers SyFy have published an oral history of the film series.
The most fascinating fact to come out of the profile is that many of the original actors almost quit the first film because it was named Sharknado.
For context: Some film productions will have fake names attached to them, to stop things like production leaks. In Sharknado’s case, it was Dark Skies.
The problem was, once the actors discovered that the movie wasn’t named Dark Skies and had a more, shall we say, unique name, they revolted.
As director Anthony C. Ferrante said:
I describe it like in Frankenstein, where all the villagers had torches and pitchforks. And they’re going, “We heard that this thing might be called Sharknado!”
And I was like, “Uh… where did you hear that?” And they’re like, “No, they’ve got to call it something else! Call it Dark Skies!” And it was so funny. They were just panicked.
The director was charged with calming the cast down and eventually getting them on board with the mildly-ridiculous name.
Which, to be fair, still isn’t as ridiculous as the concept of a tornado full of sharks.
Yep, that’s certainly a sharknado
Seriously, did none of the actors read the script? There’s a pretty big tornado full of sharks in the movie. It’s not hard to miss.