Oh hell no!

It’s weird living through the Trump era sometimes. You can feel like in you’re in a movie sometimes, huh?

But not a good movie. A movie like a sequel to one of those horrible Sharknado movies.

In January 2015, two years before he was sworn in as president, Donald Trump was set to step into the same role in a very different capacity: He had signed on to play the president in 2015’s Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!

“The Donald said yes,” recalls David Latt, the 51-year-old co-founder of The Asylum, the off-brand assembly line behind the Sharknado series. “He was thrilled to be asked.”

It eventually turned into a lawsuit threat, as you might expect when you combine the volatile elements of Sharknado and Donald Trump in a single mixture.

But enthusiasm turned into weeks of silence from the Trump camp. Eventually, a reason for the stalling emerged. “Donald’s thinking about making a legitimate run for the presidency, so we’ll get back to you,” Latt recalls Cohen saying. “This might not be the best time.” With the production clock ticking, Asylum pulled the trigger on a backup plan, offering the role to Mark Cuban — a modest casting coup that Syfy trumpeted with a press release.

“Then we immediately heard from Trump’s lawyer,” recalls Latt. “He basically said, ‘How dare you? Donald wanted to do this. We’re going to sue you! We’re going to shut the entire show down!'” Contacted by THR, Cohen acknowledges a dinner with Ziering to discuss casting Trump but says he has no recollection of the angry correspondence.

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! would have been the very classiest of the Sharknado sequels.

That I can tell you.

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