When it came to shark movies, it used to be enough for one giant rubber shark to menace a few actors in a boat. Sometime in the early '00s, creators of shark flicks began upping the ante on the genre, inventing more-and-more outlandish shark premises, resulting in movies with titles like Sharktopus, Megashark vs. Giant Octopus and 2-Headed Shark Attack. This game of shark-movie escalation reached its apparent zenith in 2013 with Sharknado, a movie about tornadoes filled with sharks.
We only thought the genre had reached its zenith with Sharknado, but then Sharknado 2 happened, and Sharknado 3 (which finally got around to putting sharks in outer space), and on-and-on until Sharknado had developed into a legitimate phenomenon. Every year since 2013, the world has unfailingly been graced with a new Sharknado movie and it's a joy to reveal that 2017 will be no different.
Get ready for it: Syfy and The Asylum have announced that Sharknado 5 is currently filming in Bulgaria with Ian Ziering back as Fin Shephard and Tara Reid as April Wexler, and original cast-member Cassie Scerbo returning as Nova. Anthony C. Ferrante, who has helmed every Sharknado film so far, is directing from a script by Scotty Mullen. A brief synopsis:
Now, in SHARKNADO 5, with much of North America lying in ruins, the rest of the world braces for the inevitable – a global sharknado. Fin Shepard and his family must put a stop to this disaster before Earth is completely obliterated.
Since the second film, the Sharknado movies have also boasted lots of amusing celebrity cameos from folks like Mark Cuban, Jerry Springer, Anne Coulter, Frankie Muniz, Gary Busey, Cheryl Tiegs, Steve Guttenberg and pretty much every other reality star and pro wrestler you can name. No doubt there will be lots of cameos in Sharknado 5 (unless they really plan on shaking up the formula) and we can look forward to that list being revealed down the road.
After North America was reduced to ruins by four movies' worth of Sharknados, the only logical step was to take the franchise international (outer space already having been visited). Now it appears Europe is the next continent to be menaced by Sharknados. With five more continents left to go, it seems there will be enough material for lots more Sharknado movies going a long way into the future.
Deliberately cheesy movies like Sharknado may not be everyone's cup of tea, but the popularity of this particular series reveals that there are plenty of people out there who enjoy hanging out with friends, having a few and watching something silly. Sharknado long ago left behind any semblance of taking itself or anything else seriously, and that's the appeal of the movies. That and tornadoes filled with sharks.
Source: Syfy