Yes, Sharknado is still a thing. The franchise’s fourth installment “Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens” airs this weekend, so we’ll soon see if this low budget blockbuster can bring in some more big numbers.

In what looks like another over-the-top movie, Sharknado 4 takes tries its choppers on a Star Wars parody (among other major movie references):

So how did they even come up with this ridiculous franchise? The first Sharknado actually had only 1.4 million viewers during its first run, but an encore presentation in 2013 combined with social media buzz made it into a cult classic.

Director Anthony Ferrante told us in 2013 that the movie embraced its ridiculousness and “just hit everybody’s sweet spot for whatever reason” that summer.

Everybody asks, you know, why did this happen?” says director Anthony C. Ferrante. “You can’t ask why; it’s ‘Sharknado.’ It’s a movie about sharks and a tornado, and it just hit everybody’s sweet spot for whatever reason this summer.”

“We have Ian Ziering going into the belly of a shark and chain-sawing his way out,” he told Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal. “Of course we know the movie that we’re making.”

The series’ second movie  “Sharknado 2: The Second One” came out the following year and had a viewership of four million people. It was the the largest audience the SyFy channel has ever had at the time.

At that point, we decided to visit the office of the franchise’s creators and see exactly how the shark chum was made.