The Point Radio: SyFy Rides High On The Winds Of SHARKNADO

It’s been a great week for the folks at SyFy with the combined audience for the second SHARKNADO film plus encores of the first hitting over 18 million viewers. We talk to director Anthony Ferrante about how big ratings don’t necessarily mean big budgets, plus Vivica Fox and Judiah Friedlander explain why they were thrilled to jump on board this franchise. Then we sit down with wrestling superstar Hulk Hogan to talk about how the landscape of the business has evolved light years in recent days, plus the real story behind his flub at Wrestlemania.

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Transcript

The Point Radio Hey it's Mike Raub, well Shark Dado 2 broke the internet again and we talked to the guys behind the film to see what it was like to get together to do it one more time. Plus the immortal Hulk Hogan talks about why pro wrestling is still cool and about that little flub at WrestleMania this year. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point, The Point Radio, get The Point Radio.

Well it's true lightning does strike twice, well in this case with a lot of wind and a few fish thrown in. Sci-fi Sharknado 2, the second one delivered almost 4 million total viewers, which was 183% above where the initial movie ended up last year. And that of course was the phenomenon in its own right. The premiere showing also hit the internet pretty hard with almost 1 billion estimated impressions for Sharknado Twitter conversations as well. And during that premiere showing it held all top 10 trending topics in the US on Twitter.

Still despite all this, making the second movie was another financial challenge according to director Anthony Ferranti. These are hard movies to do because a studio movie has 200 million dollars and we have the craft service budget for a day on one of those movies. So you just, it's crazy, it was absolutely crazy. But we wanted to pay off what was there in New York and there's a lot more iconographic locations than Los Angeles. So Times Square, City Field, Subway, Liberty Island, so it's pretty cool.

So did they really think that it was all going to work the way that it did? No, no we, what we did was we made a movie that was very strange that I thought only the genre fans would get and then it blew up. And it became this huge pop culture thing. I mean I knew we had the horror fans but we got a lot of the mainstream. That's why it blew up and Twitter blew up because we were all, it was like the most, it was like this huge communal movie going experience where the fans were watching it but then tweeting with the actors and the directors, the writers. It was crazy, absolutely not. So no we never anticipated it but we're grateful for it. Now look what's happened with it.

I mean it's like you can't go anywhere without seeing Sharknado. Sharknado 2 introduces a couple of new characters including actress Vivica Fox. I play Skye. I consider myself Finn's chocolate blast from the past. We went to high school together and he went away and became a big surf star and then he comes back home and so I kind of try to see if there's any flames left and he kind of lets me know he has April and then that's Sharknado. And then I go on an adventure on helping him slice him up some sharks. So it was really fun. Lots of running. Lots of running.

And there's some pretty cool walk on guest stars too including 30 Rock alumni, Judah Freeland. Well I wasn't playing anything like my stand up persona or anything like that so I didn't wear any trucker hat in the movie. I wore a New York Mets winter hat and I made my hair kind of look short. My hair is pinned back and the movie is short. So the place got in Brian, local Queens guy, huge Mets fan, childhood friend of Iain and Mark LeGram. You know different than my stand up or 30 Rock stuff.

There's encore showing some Sharknado 2 all this month on Sci-Fi or see it when you'd like with Sci-Fi on demand. It's the Comic Con Appomattor as we like to call it the latest in pop culture. In the ever changing landscape of superhero movie planning word comes it's Sony is now looking to release a Marvel superhero movie based on a female character. Who will it be? Well that's not for certain but the list of possibilities includes Silver Sable, Black Cat, Stuntr, Firestar and of course Spider Woman. Right now it looks like that film would fall somewhere in 2017 somewhere between Sinister 6 and The Amazing Spider-Man 3.

Sinister 6 has now been announced for 2016 as of an announcement made at Comic Con and Amazing Spider-Man 3 is set for 2018 then a movie which is expected to be released somewhere in that time frame has not had an official release date yet. Writing on the recently announced success of having 1 million subscribers Geek and Sundry has now been bought by Legendary the studio behind The Dark Knight, The Pacific Rim and also the owner of the Nerdist channel as well. No word yet on whether or not this will affect anything to do with the channel or it's regular programming which include Tabletop, Spooked and The Guild. The web series Cleaners gets a second season on Krakow with new episodes set to debut on August 19th no word yet on exactly which of the original characters will recur in the new season. Krakow also has their other new original show Sequestered which premiered just a few days ago.

Although certainly familiar to comic fans, Guardians of the Galaxy was a property that well was a little unknown to the cluster of folks who've come on to Marvel movies over the past few years to become fans of things like Avengers, Captain America and Thor. But Marvel proved that a quality product always wins out and gave the box office a much needed boost here in the late summer with a $95 million opening for Guardians of the Galaxy for its first weekend making it the biggest opening so far of the year and with an $11.2 million opening just on the Thursday night sneak preview showings. The film could be on its way to very well be the top two movies so far this year that would be the Lego movie and Captain America Winter Soldier. The NBC summer comedy Undateable has done the unthinkable and been renewed for a second season. With ratings higher than most anything NBC has put on in the summer as far as comedy series goes, the show has been given a second shot and will return to the schedule more than likely sometime in 2015.

Encore is honoring the works of Stephen King all during the month of September with a movie based on one of his books airing every Saturday at 8 o'clock. And if you'd like to binge there's an all day marathon which happens to take place on Stephen's birthday September 21st. It'll run again for 24 hours starting with the movie sometimes they come back. The point, the point. Professional wrestling is now a bigger part of pop culture than it's ever been.

Part of that due to the advent of the WWE network and the integration of sports entertainment with social media. So why is it still growing? For one of the answers to that we went to the guy who's ridden the train for decades, the immortal Hulk Hogan. I think it's the pacing, you know, with the whole universe having more choices with, you know, cable and satellite and reality TV. I think the pacing has stepped up.

The talent moves a lot quicker in the ring, even action wise, the storylines move a lot faster. I'm on really giant and I could have had an argument in December of 2000 and then we wouldn't fight until 2001 of December. And now the storylines are moved up a lot quicker. Sometimes you'll start an argument with a guy and at the end of the night, three hours later, you'll be in the ring with him. I think it has a lot to do with staying ahead of the curve, keeping people's attention and, you know, just really hooking your audience so that you don't start channel surfing or losing their focus.

Still there are some basics. I think what's old is new again. I think the past is the future. I think it goes full circle. You got to stick close to the roots.

The good guys go forward. The bad guys go backwards. I just think that at the end of the day, they're starting to find out that the thousand kicks in the corner and the thousand clotheslines and running around in the ring a thousand miles an hour does not mean anything as compared to telling a story and having one or two moves that means something and having a larger life character. That really transcends, you know, the fun, the drama, the comedy, the jeopardy. I think it's going to go more back to the larger than life characters instead of, you know, a bunch of interchangeable parts.

I think we're getting back to the dance again. This year's WrestleMania featured a classic moment with Hulk on stage along with icons The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin. And that appearance had a slight screw up when Hulk got the name of the venue they were in wrong. I asked if he had any input in the way that segment was supposed to go. Well, there was no creative input.

I just knew I had to say hello to everybody and welcome everybody to WrestleMania 30. I just pulled away from the go position. You know, usually go to the go position about five minutes before you walk out. They asked me to come really early, 15 minutes early. I think it was kind of like my first time back in front of a major crowd and they wanted to make sure I wasn't jitterbugging.

So, you know, I went there early, got pulled aside to go do a press conference with which I keep putting the heat on step name at NAM for. I said, Oh, shit, have a makeup ready or something. So I went to the press conference and asked about Andre the Giants and Memorial Battle Royal. What was he like? How heavy was he?

And I got inundated with Andre questions. And I went out and went back to the go position right before my music started. When I walked out, I saw the rock and stone cold over in the corner talking. I had no idea what was going to happen out there. And I keep teasing Stephanie.

I said, the reason I said Silverdome, it was your fault. It was actually my mess up. But I keep teasing Stephanie, you know, that it was her fault that I had to go to the press conference. But the truth was, all I could think about was Andre the Giant a couple of days before I had stood in front of the statue and it pretty much rattled me to the bone. And, you know, he was on my mind, but there was no prep for that opening brother that was on the fly.

And that was pretty intense. So his favorite part of this year's WrestleMania. Well, the match of this year's show that was my favorite was the Brock Lesnar Undertaker because I sat back in catering. And I knew about two minutes into the match that the Undertaker was already knocked out. You know, I knew that he was kind of like, you know, not knowing where where he was.

He was kind of going through the motions and then to see how he carried on. And when you're in there with Brock, it's really, really, really intense. And to see how the Undertaker just kept pushing through and what pro he was and how he pulled it off and how he made it work. A lot of guys couldn't made it work. And then after the match, my son Nick goes, dad, what's going on out there?

Who's going to win? And I said, oh, the Undertaker, of course, you know, I didn't have a clue what the ending was. And so just that was my favorite, favorite match without a doubt. Is there something we really don't know about that man? That's a tough one for me, bro.

I mean, you know, I don't know the Undertaker's personal side of the story, you know, how much longer he wants to keep pushing it. I don't know physically where his body's at because believe me, I'm not saying he did, but I hit a wall at a certain point physically. I don't know if he's buried or not. And then all of a sudden, now Sting, Sting shows up on the scene and I'm going, oh, my gosh, that would have been the match of all matches to have Sting and the Undertaker go at it if his streak wasn't broken. So I'm kind of like torn, you know, on the finish.

It was done for a reason, for a business reason. I don't know the answer to that. I don't know if there's major plans for a rematch, which could be, you know, just because you break the streak, we all act like it's the end of the world. Vince McMahon knows stuff we don't know. He can have a plan bigger than we ever dreamed of.

So, you know, I'm not going to second-guess him because I've watched him for so long. He's always got a down card. So I just don't know, brother. It's just, I don't know. You know, there's something more to it than we know.

We got more with the Hulkster coming up, including his cut on some of the current WWE superstars. In the meantime, there's plenty of Hulk Hogan past and present on the WWE Network, available for $9.99 per month. Get more details at www.wwe.com. And WrestleMania 30 is available on DVD right now. You can get that at www.wwe.com or on Amazon.

Good point. And as of the podcast, but again, we're back in a few days on all the usual places. Online at ComicMix.com and MichaelDavisWorld.com. And in the iTunes Podcast directory where you can always subscribe. Meanwhile, there's some big changes coming to GetThePointRadio.com.

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