SCI FI WIRE‘s Ian Spelling talked with Michael Shanks about his role in Sci Fi Channel’s new original movie Mega Snake, due to premiere on Saturday, August 25, at 9pm Eastern. Shanks filmed the movie in Bulgaria following the end of production of Stargate SG-1 last year.
“The title says it all,” Shanks said with a laugh during an interview. He added: “If you can believe it, it’s about a very large snake, and, believe it or not, there’s actually a realistic quotient to it.”
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The movie is based on the real-life snake-handling religious cults in the American South, Shanks said. “The empowerment of this snake is representative of some sort of religious icon for them,” he added. “We actually watched some documentary footage of these people from the Deep South who go to these snake rituals, which was quite disturbing.”
Shanks’ character’s father was one of the priests of a snake cult and died from a snakebite. “My character has been scarred for life ever since from witnessing this and has a deathly fear of snakes,” Shanks said. “And, of course, the way the chain of unfortunate events happens, a giant snake starts attacking the town, and he must overcome his own fears to fight the horrible beast. … There were a few rubber snakes around for the early stages of it, and since then they’ve added the CGI.”
The computer-generated effects impressed Shanks, who played Dr. Daniel Jackson on SG-1 for 10 seasons. “It’s pretty sweet,” he said. “I will not jump on any kind of false bandwagon and claim that this is the most iconic piece of entertainment to ever hit the small screen, but it carries a certain entertainment value for these kinds of movies.”
Snake-handling religious organizations are not isolated to the Deep South. According to the Wikipedia: “Snake handling” article, there’s a church in Shanks’ hometown of Kamloops, British Columbia!
Mega Snake also features the debut of last year’s winner of the Sci Fi Channel’s competition Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, Matthew Atherton, aka “Feedback”. Visit Sci Fi’s Mega Snake homepage to see the movie’s poster and actor credits, as well as a streaming video promo.
Airings for the movie (from Sci Fi’s Schedulebot):
08/25/2007 09:00 PM
08/25/2007 01:00 AM
08/30/2007 07:00 PM