‘Sharknado 4’ Cast Announced, Story Takes Place Five Years Later

Sharknado fans have something new to look forward to this summer: Sharknado 4. Today, Syfy and The Asylum, the production company responsible for the first three shark-attack-via-tornado movies, announced the casting of the fourth installment of the franchise.

As reported by Deadline, the fourth film is said to take place five years after the brutal attack on the East Coast featured in last summer’s Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No. Of course, Ian Ziering will be back to play shark slayer Fin Shephard, because the new film just wouldn’t be the same without the ex-Beverly Hills 90210 star. Tara Reid, who plays Fin’s wife, April, will be in it as well. However, how much scene time she will get remains a mystery.

At the end of Sharknado 3, April was in line to be hit with shrapnel from a space shuttle just moments after she had just given birth. After the initial airing of the movie, Syfy offered fans to decide April’s fate, asking fans to take to Twitter and tweet either #AprilLives or #AprilDies. The answer to that question will not be known until Sharknado 4 airs sometime this July.

Also returning for more fun will be David Hasselhoff (Gil Shepherd) and Ryan Newman (Claudia Shepherd). Just some of the stars and celebrities joining the gang will be:

• Gary Busey as Wilford Wexler, April’s father who just so happens to be a scientist at Astro-X who works in the area of robotics.
• Tommy Davidson as Aston Reynolds, who is the CEO of Astro-X who are in the process of preventing the formation of tornadoes with or without sharks.
• Cody Linley as Matt, Fin and April’s oldest son who went to flight school and then served in the Army and now is looking forward to reuniting with his folks. Maybe he shouldn’t have come home.
• Imani Hakim as Gabrielle, Matt’s best friend and army buddy.
• Masiela Lusha as Gemini, Fin’s cousin and shark fighter.
• Cheryl Tiegs as Raye, Fin’s mother and Gil Shepherd’s ex-wife.

As they have done with the first three made-for-TV movies, Sharknado 4 is being directed by Anthony C. Ferrante who is working with a screenplay written by Thunder Levin.

The original Sharknado film aired in July of 2013 and was initially just another one of Syfy’s “original movies” that were over-the-top disaster films with cheesy effects — films that were made “bad” on purpose. However, this film resonated with audiences more than others. It is estimated that about 1.4 million people viewing the shark movie’s first airing began to share their thoughts via Twitter. Those who were not watching the movie were soon interested and began to wonder what it was that they were missing. Today, the film is a cult classic.

With each new addition to the shark disaster franchise, the storylines get bolder and crazier and more celebrities get cast to play numerous cameo roles. In Sharknado 3, the entire Today Show cast were showcased. Al Roker’s weather report on the Sharknado warnings were especially well received. Unfortunately, each cast member met an untimely demise as sharks fell through the ceiling of the morning show’s studio and gobbled them all up.

One such celebrity that didn’t make the final cut of Sharknado 3 was Jared Fogle of the Subway restaurant fame. Both Subway and Fogle made appearances in Sharknado 2, but due to him being prosecuted for child pornography charges the week before the premiere of Sharknado 3, his scenes were dropped from the movie. However, Subway’s logo still appeared often in the film.

In a similar ploy for ratings, Lifetime (another network known for showing less-than-stellar “original movies”) attempted their own Sharknado-type of film last summer with a stunt casting Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig in A Deadly Adoption: The Birth of a Plan Gone Wrong. Though cheesy and at times laughable, the film played it too straight to be much fun and didn’t attract the attention that the Syfy hit did.

[Photo by Mark Davis / Getty Images]