Syfy's latest schlocky made for TV guilty pleasure struck Twitter on Thursday like well a swirling cyclone of bloodthirsty fish. In fact the network said that at its peak the corny B movie about a shark laden tornado that devastates Los Angeles was hurling nearly 5 000 tweets a minute. Bosses announced plans for an encore next week and mulled a possible sequel.
And yet the ratings Sharknado hit 1.4 million total viewers no better than Syfy's typical draw for such a movie. NBC gathered an audience nearly three times as large with Hollywood Game Night itself no ratings monster.
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You might say Sharknado is the one that got away a fish far bigger in the telling than in real life. What happened
Credit the power of Twitter to operate as an alternative crowd sourced network amplifying things that the mainstream media miss or downplay. Just don't believe there's an exact correlation between number of tweets and real world performance. Sharknado reminded many users of Snakes on a Plane the 2006 movie that got enormous pre release buzz online and then crashed at the box office.
There are certain things that social media loves said Sree Sreenivasan a social media expert and the chief digital officer at Columbia University. The ready for joke writers title coupled with a relatively slow news cycle helped Sharknado catch on.
The sheer absurdity of it means it inherently gives you a place to be funny and show your wit to tens of thousands of people Sreenivasan added.
But that doesn't translate into actual popularity. Just because someone's writing about you doesn't mean they'll buy your product he said.
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For Syfy though Sharknado may count as a hit if only in brand awareness.
This type of free press on social media has helped put the network and these grade B movies on the radar of viewers said Brad Adgate an analyst at ad firm Horizon Media in New York.
Indeed the combination of an absurd yet self explanatory premise a clumsy portmanteau title visual effects that would have embarrassed Ed Wood and D list stars proved to be the perfect storm for Twitter snark. Everyone or at least everyone related to the media industry seemed to have something to say.
Former Lost writer producer Damon Lindelof live tweeted the movie at one point joking I am going to write the Sharknado sequel and I am going to do it before Shaknado is over. NBC newsman Chuck Todd observed I follow about a thousand folks. Every one of them tweeting about SharkNado. (NBC and Syfy are both owned by Comcast's NBCUniversal division.)
The film's director Anthony Ferrante even remarked on the social media frenzy I have never been part of something this crazy ... the whole world is watching my insane little movie and talking about it.
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It's not the first absurdly titled B movie from Syfy. The network first dabbled in the genre with 2005's Mansquito but since then social media have boomed as have the network's campy originals. (See also Dinoshark Chupacabra vs. the Alamo. )
It used to be you'd sit and watch movies with your family and throw comments at the screen said Thomas Vitale the network's executive vice president of movies invoking the example of Mystery Science Theater 3000 the '90s cult comedy series in which snarky robots offered running commentary on schlocky sci fi and horror movies. Now with social media you can have that experience with millions of people.
Said the film's aptly named writer Thunder Levin I'd love to take credit it for myself but I think it was simply a combination of the title being the end all be all of ridiculous movie titles and a simple but obvious marketing strategy.
Though Syfy takes external pitches as with the William Shatner produced Fire Serpent the network also generates some of their best ideas in house.
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