The location for the second film was set. The cast was in place. The sports element was a done deal.
But Sharknado director Anthony C. Ferrante was running out of time to make his gruesome, twisted, MLB-infused vision a reality.
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"I knew that if we were going to do New York, we were going to do baseball," Ferrante told Sporting News. "And you can't do 'Sharknado' without a ballpark."
If you were one of the 3.9 million viewers who tuned in for Wednesday night's "Sharknado 2: The Second One" on Syfy, you already know that Ferrante got his ballpark. He got a character to bash a hammerhead shark into the Citi Field scoreboard. He even got the Mets' Home Run Apple involved.
All of that, he says, almost never happened.
"We kept saying that 'MLB won't let us shoot in their field,' " Ferrante said. "One of our producers kept hounding them, and in the 11th hour, we got Citi Field."
What they got was one day to shoot — and it was one heck of a day.
There was snow. There was rain. There was sun.
And yeah, there also was one gnarly Sharknado.
"When you see all the stuff we did in the film, (the Mets) talked to us — 'what do you want to do?' — they just made it easy," Ferrante said. "They rolled out the red carpet for us."
Sharknado director Anthony C. Ferrante. (Source: Courtesy photo)
Because of the original film's popularity among sports fans, the director said he "wanted to pay tribute to the sports community that so whole-heartedly embraced" the low-budget flick.
"The first time around, I was floored that the sports community loved us," Ferrante said. "It's a silly concept that everyone sort of came aboard.
"It doesn't make sense, but with Sharknado, it doesn't need to make sense. It just happens and you accept it."