Sharknado Returns From The Deep As Sharknado Origins Gets Ready To Spin
Seven years after The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time wrapped up the world’s most gloriously stupid disaster saga, The Asylum has decided that it is about time for another bite. Yes, the storm is brewing again. The studio has officially announced Sharknado Origins, a prequel that will see the toothy tornado franchise rise once more from the cinematic deep.
And the best part? Director Anthony C Ferrante — the man responsible for all six previous entries — is returning to the helm. Because if anyone knows how to whip sharks through the atmosphere like sentient lawn darts, it is him. Production on Sharknado Origins is expected to begin later this year, with a planned release for summer 2026.
Ferrante’s history with sharks is already the stuff of cult legend. A former writer for Fangoria magazine, he has now directed twenty feature films, most of them involving either monsters, weather, or both. Since The Last Sharknado, he has kept the aquatic carnage alive with Blind Waters and Great White Waters for The Asylum, because apparently there are still a few parts of the ocean left to ruin.
The new film, as the title suggests, will rewind the clock to show us how the very first shark storm ever came to be. According to Variety, Sharknado Origins introduces audiences to teenage versions of the franchise’s central couple, Fin and April, originally played by Ian Ziering and Tara Reid. Set during a perfect beach summer, the story will follow young Fin and April as they meet, flirt, and fall in love right up until the moment the sky darkens, a giant funnel cloud appears, and a school of airborne sharks crashes their date. Because nothing says young love quite like marine life being hurled through the air by an act of God.
For those who somehow managed to avoid the phenomenon that was Sharknado, here is a refresher. The original 2013 film told the story of a freak weather event that combined a hurricane with a swarm of angry sharks off the Santa Monica coast. The result was a twister filled with flying great whites devouring everyone in sight. The script, written by Thunder Levin, was equal parts creature feature and meme generator. It premiered on Syfy on July 11, 2013, and became an instant cult sensation, mostly because it was so absurd that it somehow looped back around to being brilliant.
That first movie’s success created a phenomenon that The Asylum milked for all it was worth, and honestly, who can blame them? Over the next five years, the franchise spun into cinematic overdrive with Sharknado 2: The Second One in 2014, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! in 2015, Sharknado: The 4th Awakens in 2016, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming in 2017, and finally The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time in 2018. The titles alone are proof that this series stopped taking itself seriously after the first five minutes of the original.
There were crossovers, spin offs, and cameos galore. Ian Ziering even showed up as his Sharknado character in Lavalantula (because of course a movie about lava spewing tarantulas needed that connection). There was also a mockumentary titled Sharknado: Heart of Sharkness and even a cheeky reference to the franchise in The Asylum’s 2025 Armageddon. For a while, the Sharknado series was like cinematic comfort food, greasy, ridiculous, and impossible to stop consuming once you started.
So what can fans expect from Sharknado Origins? If history is any guide, the film will deliver exactly what the series does best, a perfect blend of chaotic energy, tongue in cheek humor, and CGI that could make a PlayStation 2 blush. But beneath all that insanity, there is a strange kind of charm. The Sharknado movies have always been in on the joke. They celebrate bad taste with the enthusiasm of a B movie marathon at three in the morning, and that is precisely why people love them.
The thought of teenage Fin and April facing the first ever shark storm feels like a natural fit for the series’ brand of lunacy. Expect awkward flirting, bad weather, and a lot of fin based puns. In the world of Sharknado, logic is optional, science is a suggestion, and the only constant is that someone, somewhere, will be eaten mid sentence.
The Sharknado franchise may not win Oscars, but it has earned something even better, immortality in the cult horror pantheon. And with Sharknado Origins officially on the horizon, fans can once again prepare for a cinematic experience that promises two things, airborne sharks and unapologetic stupidity, delivered with a smile.
Grab your umbrellas. It is going to rain fish again.
