Five movie ideas that studios can steal from ‘Sharknado’
“What if we took ‘Snakes on a Plane,’ combined it with ‘Jaws’ and relocated the thing from an airliner to the Westside of Los Angeles?”
Someone, somewhere uttered those words before coming up with the idea for “Sharknado.”
Which makes us wonder how one can then take “Sharknado” and turn it into a feature film. Like: “What if we did ‘Sharknado,’ changed the threat and used a different portmanteau?”
With the SyFy Channel movie a Twitter hit, studio executives around Hollywood on Friday morning are calling meetings to figure out how they can get in on the action. We came up with five ideas for similar movies to save them the trouble.
“Piranhacane” Sure, piranhas are fish and need to live in the water. But what if the water came from above, like from a hurricane, and the piranhas could be carried wherever they wanted to go? It would be scary, wouldn’t it? The key scene takes place over a catchy Bob Dylan song, “Here Comes the Story of a Piranhacane.” Brian Austin Green plays a wily fisherman.
“Twistquake” Helen Hunt has been having a rough time of it lately. Her storm-chasing life isn’t the same since she was turned down for a Discovery special. Then she gets word of a new kind of twister: It’s one that also causes an earthquake. She is at first perplexed, as a twister originates in the air and an earthquake originates under the ground, but then realizes that since wind also hits the ground, this was OK. The twistquake causes much destruction, until, watching a scene from “The Wizard of Oz,” Hunt realizes what she needs to do. Gabrielle Carteris stars as a feisty seismologist.
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“The Day After the Stormcano” Jake Gyllenhaal is a climate scientist who has spent years investigating the effects of global warming when he realizes his thermometer has been upside down the whole time, and the Earth has in fact been cooling. As he ponders this discovery, an entirely unrelated volcano erupts near him. He then has to hotfoot over lava so he can tell the upside-down thermometer news to experts at a weather station on the other side. Tori Spelling stars a rather lonely volcanologist.
“The Surge” For 364 days of the year, the seas are calm. For one day they swell and surge, mowing down children, sandcastles and minor skyscrapers. Only one man, played by Ethan Hawke, can save them, which he does by building a fortified house and talking about life’s existential problems with a really chatty Frenchwoman. It so scares the wave that the water beats a hasty retreat back to the sea. Luke Perry stars as a very untroubled lifeguard.
“White Housteroid” The problem with domestic terrorists taking over the White House is that there’s always a plucky veteran who looks like Channing Tatum there to fight them off. But what if the threat came not from within but from above? Global warming has unloosed some meteors in a distant solar system, which as any scientist could tell you causes an asteroid the size of Jupiter to travel on an exact vector toward Earth. Tatum struts in and, with one hand, pushes the asteroid back into the solar system while uttering his signature line: “I got this.” Jason Priestley stars as a very idealistic vice president.
ALSO:
‘Sharknado’ creates a social-media storm
SyFy plans shark marathon for ‘Sharknado’
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