Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus: How The Asylum made it in 12 days

Film about the war of 1979 Apocalypse Now is infamous for going over budget, over schedule, and over the top to appease director Francis Ford Coppola’s every demand. 2009’s Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus The exact opposite is what makes it famous. Pumped through the direct-to-video company The Asylum’s “mockbuster” pipeline for a fraction of a fraction of the cost of a typical tentpole, the movie delivers just enough to validate the marquee-friendly title. Today, Apocalypse Now is considered one of the greatest American movies. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus Floats across streaming libraries, and the internet is filled with big floppy CG Shark memes. But was pulling it off any less of a feat than Coppola’s blood-sweat-and-tears epic?

The patient must be treated Mega Shark vs. Giant OctopusEs are just like their private lives Apocalypse NowJack Perez, writer and director was ready for the challenge. He began his career in 1990 as a photographer, creating behind-the-scenes documentary films on sets. Carlito’s Way, FlintstonesPlease see the following: Hard targetsSam Raimi hired him as a director after he met him at a party. Hercules’ backdoor pilot for Xena. By then Perez had directed an indie feature, the found-footage-before-found-footage-was-a-thing horror flick America’s Deadliest Home Video, He had stop-motion animation experience and was familiar with commercial sets. The future was bright enough; Perez spent the ’90s and 2000s bouncing between indie features and gigs-for-hire like Wild Things 2 and MTV’s TV movie Monster Island.

Mega Shark vs. Giant OctopusThe story follows a group of oceanographers who attempt to kill two underwater Japanese kaijus by tricking them into joining a jaw-snapping, tentacle-flapping fight. It was not something Perez wanted to do for a hobby. But when Perez signed on, he wanted it to be good — even if the Debbie Gibson-led creature feature was just another cog in The Asylum’s notorious business model. And it seemed to have worked; the movie’s low-rent visual effects and stilted drama mesmerized internet kids, prompting Asylum to produce several Mega Shark sequels. Înainteas the super-self-aware gimmicks SharknadoPerez was also an Asylum member, and he channeled his 1970s monster-movie nostalgia into low-price popcorn entertainment.

Was it possible to wrap and seal an Asylum movie? Perez called me out of curiosity to discuss the making of “Asylum Movie”. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

[Ed. note: This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.]

Image: The Asylum

Which of these are your most memorable moments? Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus The Asylum

Jack Perez: I’ve always bounced between independent films and more commercial work, depending on what opportunities are presented. The Asylum didn’t used to be a low-budget schlock factory — they were originally a distributor of independent movies, if you can believe it. My second feature, called “Secrets of the Asylum”, was distributed by them. The Big EmptyThis was a kind of character-driven noir. Because they knew me well, the company was a mockbuster schlock production plant. They were searching for directors that could work under tight deadlines, much like Roger Corman. I would happily do these nuts movies if my money was low or any gig was cancelled.

My preparations for an intimate movie had taken me a long time. It had already been cast and was all set to go. But, Hollywood has a way of making it impossible to finance. I found myself like, “Oh, shit, how am I going to pay the rent?” So I picked up the phone and called The Asylum and said, “What do you got? I need something for this month.” They said, “Well, can you write and direct a ‘versus’ monster movie in a couple of weeks and shoot in a couple of weeks?” And I was like, “Yes, of course!”

What is the secret to Mega Shark and Giant Octopus landing? You don’t know where to start with a movie such as this.

I have a long love of monster movies — the films of Ray Harryhausen, King Kong, and, all the Godzilla movies were things that I was raised on as a kid. So it’s very easy for me to sort of open up that reservoir and reconstitute all those tropes and things that I love into whatever was necessary.

The Asylum had at that time a VHS/DVD distribution agreement. Basically the distributor said, “We need a ‘versus’ monster movie, can you guys do that kind of thing?” They said yes, and basically turned to someone like me to do it. At the time, they just had “Mega shark vs. Giant Squid” on paper — I don’t know if that came from 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea. But then as I was writing it, they were like, “No, it’s an octopus,” which didn’t really change it very much. The whole idea of “Mega versus Giant” is essentially taking Jaws and making it 500 feet tall. Since there is already a subgenre for shark movies. Jaws — Mako: The Jaws of Death, Tintorera: Killer Shark, Orca, and all that kind of stuff — it was something that was known. And, I didn’t know about this at the time, but there have been documented actual undersea battles between sharks and octopus on occasion!

So that’s what I was given. Because the company was known for its penchant to re-edit, I ended up using a pseudonym. This was exactly what they did. These movies are made very quickly, and when you’re dealing with so many limitations, production-wise, I find that speed, like tempo, is a way of compensating. A very fast-paced movie will hold your interest so that you can’t really scrutinize problems with performance, problems with writing, problems with special effects.

The Asylum’s problem is that they sometimes have to be within certain lengths of running time so they will re-edit it and add more. When you are watching, Mega SharkAlthough my original version is faster and much more entertaining, they wanted it to take about 10 to 15 extra minutes. The editors then went into the editing room and opened the scenes. This leads to a lot of unneeded reaction shots and pauses. I can’t believe it still bothers me, but it’s like when somebody tries to extend their book report by double spacing.

Is it possible to both write within the budget of the final project and still have fun writing?

The writing process took two weeks. After that, there were some revisions. I needed to get it out. When you write on that schedule, you basically do the math and say, “How many pages a day do I need to complete it?” If it’s gonna be 100 pages, you have to write at least six or seven pages a day. Crazy.

The producers at The Asylum always had this mandate where they said, “This has to be written and directed with absolute seriousness.” In other words, you can’t poke fun at this stuff. To me this was absurd. To be dealing with such extreme limitations, you’re not going to fool anybody, so at every turn I tried to add absurdity into the story in terms of what happened, like the shark biting a plane out of the air, or the shark eating the Golden Gate Bridge. One character made a reference to Julius Caesar during the film. In the hope that anyone half-aware of the absurdity would see that it was, I had some things I wanted to throw in hopes that someone else might be able to recognize that these were not real. The RoomOr an Ed Wood movie.

Image of The Asylum. Courtesy Jack Perez

One of my favorite things is: There’s a scene I wrote where they’re trying to come up with this formula to get the animals to come together to kill each other, some sort of pheromone, and I have this ridiculous little montage where they’re like basically adding food coloring to beakers and water, trying to solve the chemical equation problem. Some actual chemists got ahold of it, and they posted something on YouTube called “doing science” and they just show that scene because it’s the most uninformed idea of chemistry.

One thing is certain, you can make a film called Mega Shark vs. Giant OctopusMega shark-fighting giant octopus material should have been more common. I would have preferred that they spent a little bit more money and made another, because I wrote way more fighting stuff than what’s in it. They could double-space to boost the overall pacing. Instead, let’s do some more fight sequences. Because that’s what people would want to see. This would require spending money which is something that nobody likes to do.

So I wrote as extreme stuff as I could. The concept was far more important than the actual effects, as I knew they would be not realistic. The effects needed to look the Idea of the effect — like a shark jumping out of the ocean eating a plane. It wasn’t going to be photorealistic, but at least it would be fun.

How did you manage to shoot the film in just 12 days?

It’s insane. I don’t wish it on anybody. The schedules are getting shorter, which is funny.

The book was full of tricks that I tried. I knew I could make TV and features, but I didn’t know much about the rest of it. It’s up to you to make it look good. You don’t shoot one frame more than you need. The goal is to make a cut.

Mostly it’s just about solving the problems that were inherent in my own script. In the movie, there’s all this submarine action, but there are no submarine sets flying around. And that’s at least for the moment. [at The Asylum]There was not enough money for production or construction to make a set of submarines. How do you communicate a lot of sub-sea scenes? I realized one of the stages we were shooting at had a standing sci-fi hallway set à la AlienBecause 25 million people were involved. AlienThe original is followed by knockoffs. We had a Ridley Scott-style futuristic corridor. It was narrow which is why a submarine is called. So I decided to rent a Periscope. The periscope was placed in the middle of everyone’s heads, along with Red October jumpers.

Image of The Asylum. Courtesy Jack Perez

Are the photos blurred now or do you have some memorable memories?

There’s a scene at the beginning of the movie where they find a sperm whale that’s been bitten to pieces. This scene comes directly from Jaws 2The one I saw growing up. The giant shark attacked the largest whale on the planet.

This would normally be a CGI effect. However, as an in camera effect I made a miniature of the foreground. The camera was set up at the front by a four-foot foam rubber whale. It’s a classic force-perspective gag — you move the people a block away, and you line it up so that it appears that two are interacting with each other. And it’s an in-camera effect. This effect looks amazing! You can trust it to work every single time. It was almost like I tried to have fun, because I was frustrated by all of the limitations. I was like, “I’m going to do something like I would have done when I was like a kid making Super 8 movies.” Everybody got a huge kick out of it, because nobody was accustomed to experiencing in-camera practical effects like that.

Rumours circulated that the film would be made into 3D and then released.

That was a topic that was discussed. It is also crazy that this technology has a high price. You can’t fault them for being ambitious in terms of what they want to do. And 3D hadn’t quite made a huge comeback, so the idea was really exciting. However, I believe the film would have needed to be made in just four days in 3D.

Photo by Jack Perez

I’ve also been a film professor for 10 years, and I tell my students that if you’re going to make your first film, and you only have a couple thousand dollars, then do yourself a favor and write something that can be fully realized for the budget. If you only have $2,000, you don’t try to make Raiders of the Lost Ark, because it’s just not going to work. But that’s never stopped The Asylum. It’s like, “No, we’ll do Jurassic Park, but we’ll do it for a $1.95.” So you get this weird sort of approximation of something that sort of fits in a DVD sleeve.

The Asylum, however, is only a small part of the movie industry. They know how much money their movie’s going to make. So they don’t want to spend a penny more that’s going to eat into their profit. Even though spending more would yield a better movie, if their primary goal is to make money, then they will sacrifice the quality of the movie and quality effects and the number of days it takes to shoot to ensure that there’s a return. But if you’re a filmmaker, you don’t think in those terms. You’re thinking, “Give me another shot. Give me one more hour, and I can make the movie better.”

It is very rare to get the opportunity to make a movie. If you’re one of those people who makes a movie every year, which is the 1%, then you’re probably not going to have the same appreciation. However, movies are usually made over a period of several years. However, any chance, regardless of its limitations, or the story’s merits, should be taken seriously. It’s possible to either treat it with professionalism or as a bitter brat. So I’ve always been real conscious of that, particularly when I only have like 12 days. Let’s try to make this as good as we can.

Mega Shark vs. Giant OctopusYou can stream it for free, with no ads. Peacock, TubiPlease see the following: Pluto TV.