What A Story: ‘The Room’ Director Tommy Wiseau Says “Oh, Hai Shark” In New Movie Trailer
Have you ever wondered what if the auteur who made The Room turned his hand to directing a shark movie?
Well, wonder no more. Thursday, Tommy Wiseau unleashed a trailer for Big Shark, which is coming soon to a theater, though it may not be near you. This is Wiseau’s directorial followup to The Room, widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made.
In Big Shark, three firefighters, Georgie, Patrick and Tim, must save New Orleans from an attack by what looks like an extra from Sharknado: a very big and mobile shark that refuses to be confined to a body of water. Isaiah LaBorde and Mark Valeriano round out the cast.
Though the trailer is around 35% footage of a boxing match and 50% a commercial for Wiseau’s self-designed underwear line, it does offer a few tanalizing frames from the finished product, including a glimpse of frequent Wiseau collaborator Greg Sistero, who also starred in The Room. Sestero is more evident in a trailer released shortly after the film was announced, back in 2019. His involvement in the finished version of Shark is unknown.
Big Shark will start its theatrical run road-show style with a screening April 2nd at Cinema 21 in Portland, Oregon. From there, it’ll play at Prytania Theatres at Canal Place in New Orleans on April 28th-29th, the Balboa Theatre in San Francisco on May 5th-6th, the Landmark Westwood in Los Angeles on June 2nd- 3rd, and the Village East by Angelika in New York from August 10th-12th.
Wiseau plans to appear in person for this first series of self-branded “Pre-Premier” screenings. The roadshow-style theatrical rollout will continue for approximately eight months, with a release of the “Official Final Cut Version” of Big Shark to follow. Hopefully there will be a nationwide release as well, because this looks unmissable.
The trailer directs you to go to BigSharkMovie.com for more information but as of this writing, that will just get you redirected to Wiseau’s site where he shills the underwear with his name on them.
Wiseau’s first feature, The Room, is seen as a legendarily bad, if highly watchable. The troubled, secretively funded independent production (as documented in Sestero’s book and the film The Disaster Artist) received at best dismissive reviews. Not long after that, though, the, um, romantic drama found an appreciative audience in midnight showings across the country, with audience participation a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Wiseau, who wrote, directed, produced and starred in the film also serves as public ambassador for his film. He continues to promote The Room to this day, appearing for Q&As at special screenings nationwide, as does Sestero. Wiseau and Sistero appeared together previously in 2017’s Best F(r)iends, written by Sestero and directed by Justin MacGregor.