'Sharknado' takes Internet by storm

If you question the power of Sharknado, you do so at your own peril because, as Entertainment Weekly aptly phrased it, it was "another Syfy disaster movie gone horribly right."

In a press release today, Syfy announced its "Syfy Original Movie" "devoured the Internet last night during its July 11 premiere, becoming the most social program on all of television – broadcast and cable – as well as Syfy’s most social telecast ever."

Said Syfy, Sharknado generated, at its peak, about five thousand tweets per minute. Additionally, it garnered 387K social mentions (97% driven by Twitter with the top hashtags #sharknado and #syfy) and "bested competitive cable/broadcast programming including CBS’ Big Brother/The Big Bang Theory and was within 2.5K tweets of the Game of Thrones#Red Wedding episode."

Syfy reported that celebrities tweeting about the movies were Patton Oswalt, Damon Lindelof, Elizabeth Banks, Olivia Wilde, Mia Farrow – even the American Red Cross.

And why not repeat the success? To bite into more attention, Syfy will present a special encore presentation of Sharknado on Thursday, July 18 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

-Aaron Sagers