Tooth And Grail

The wildest fish tale ever told on television is coming to an end.

The sixth and final installment of Syfy’s campy summer film franchise — The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time — premiered August 19. Our chainsaw-wielding hero, Fin — played once again with admirable swagger by Ian Ziering — travels back in time in a last-ditch effort to save the world from the shark storms known as sharknadoes.

“We’ve taken our audience to some outrageous places in previous films, but time travel is an area we haven’t gone to yet with the franchise,” says executive producer David Rimawi, a founding partner of The Asylum, the production company behind Sharknado .

Diving into the past allows for some wonderfully bonkers action sequences — Fin rides a megalodon through a meteor shower during a visit to prehistoric times and does battle with sharks as a knight in the Middle Ages.

Scotty Mullen’s script also resurrects Sharknado’s April (Tara Reid) and Nova (Cassie Scerbo), both of whom died in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, as well as Skye (Vivica A. Fox), who perished way back in Sharknado 2.

As outrageous and wildly funny as the Sharknado films — all directed by Anthony C. Ferrante — have been, they aren’t made like traditional comedies, Rimawi points out. “Our intention from script to final visual effect is to make everything as realistic and serious as possible,” he says, “and let the circumstances make it funny.”

Rimawi acknowledges that neither he nor anyone associated with the original Sharknado, which debuted on Syfy in 2013, could have imagined it would become a pop-culture phenomenon that would launch a series of sequels.

“As surreal as the movies are, it’s been a surreal experience for all of us involved in this,” he says, “and we couldn’t be happier.”

This article originally appeared in emmy megazine, Issue No. 8, 2018