Thunder Levin is an American
screenwriter
A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based.
...
and
director, most famous for writing the first four
Sharknado films.
Levin's work was largely responsible for the resurgence of
sharksploitation films.
Background
Levin was born and raised in
New York City. His father Michael was an award-winning journalist, while his mother Glenis was an immigrant from
Liverpool,
England.
Levin graduated from
Hunter College High School
Hunter College High School is a secondary school located in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is administered by Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Hunter is publicly funded, and there i ...
, and received his
BFA in Film from
NYU.
Early career
Levin moved to Los Angeles at the age of 23. In the late 1980s he worked as a still photographer on three movies for the legendary film producer
Roger Corman.
Levin's feature-film directorial debut was the 2008
horror comedy ''Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood!''
starring
C. Thomas Howell.
Levin subsequently wrote and directed multiple films for production company
The Asylum
The Asylum is an American independent film company and distributor that focuses on producing low-budget, direct-to-video films. It is notorious for producing titles that capitalize on productions by major studios, often using film titles and s ...
, including the 2012
science-fiction action film ''
American Warships
''American Warships'' is a 2012 science fiction action film directed by Thunder Levin and distributed by The Asylum. It premiered on the Syfy Channel on May 15, 2012. In the tradition of The Asylum's film catalog, the film is an extremely low-budg ...
'' and the 2013
sci-fi film ''
AE: Apocalypse Earth''.
''Sharknado''
In 2013, Levin wrote the
made-for-television disaster film
A disaster film or disaster movie is a film genre that has an impending or ongoing disaster as its subject and primary plot device. Such disasters may include natural disasters, accidents, military/terrorist attacks or global catastrophes such as ...
''
Sharknado'', about a tornado of shark-infested seawater. The film's debut on
SyFy
Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel, later shortened to Sci Fi; stylized as SYFY) is an American basic cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. Lau ...
attracted nearly 1.37 million viewers and generated nearly 5,000
tweets a minute at its peak. In 2014 Levin penned a sequel, ''
Sharknado 2: The Second One'', which pulled in 3.9 million viewers.
Levin subsequently wrote two more sequels, 2015's ''
Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!'' and 2016's ''
Sharknado: The 4th Awakens''. ''Sharknado'' became a pop culture phenomenon, ultimately spawning
five sequels, a
video game, a book, a
one-shot
One shot may refer to:
Film and television
* One-shot film, a feature film shot in one long take with no edits, or manufactured to look like so
* ''One Shot'' (2005 film), a Sri Lankan action film directed by Ranjan Ramanayake
* ''One Shot'' (2 ...
comic book, a documentary, and a
mockumentary.
Levin insists there is a scientific basis for the "sharknado" phenomenon.
Filmography
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levin, Thunder
American screenwriters
American directors
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)