"Sharknado 2: The Second Coming" shattered a few records when it premiered on Wednesday, July 30 on the Syfy Channel. The film, which is about a shark-filled tornado terrorizing New York City, quickly became the network's most watched original movie ever.
It also broke social media records previously set by the original "Sharknado." According to Contactmusic.com, the sequel nabbed 3.9 million viewers for its premiere and generated 581,000 tweets from 188,000 authors.
When the first movie premiered almost exactly a year ago, 1.4 million viewers tuned in and it generated 5,000 tweets per minutes. Both films have become somewhat of a cult social media phenomena.
"At one point, 'Sharknado 2' held all of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter in the United States," Contactmusic.com reports.
Because of the success of both films, Syfy announced plans to make a third installment. Details about the location and cast have not been revealed yet but it will be released in September 2015.
Tara Reid, who stars in the film alongside Ian Ziering, told E! News earlier in the year that she signed on as a joke and didn't expect people to like the movie so much.
"I was bracing for the worst, but of course was always hoping for the best," Ziering told CBS. "We took it seriously. We committed to the material and it was enough that people were able to suspend disbelief or enjoy the fantasy and escape reality to the point where, 'Wow, there's sharks and tornados and look how this guy is shooting sharks out of the sky."
He said he initially agreed to do the first film because he needed to provide for his family.
"I had to take one for the team. It was early January. As an actor, my health insurance comes from my union and in Screen Actors Guild, you have to make so much every year within the union to qualify for the top tier of insurance," Ziering explained. "And having a baby shortly after that, I realized, 'I have to do this.' I was really upset to be quite honest because the script didn't really read very well. It had holes in it that were left to the imagination for the special effects to fill... [and] you never know the level of technology that they have to make the film... But as a husband a father, no stone goes unturned."
