Scene from 2017 movie viral as actual shark attack on helicopter

by Archit Mehta

Several Twitter users have shared a 15-second clip of a giant fish leaping out of the water and attacking a helicopter. As per social media claims, National Geographic paid a million dollars for this “rare video”.

A Twitter user shared the viral video along with the text, “National geographic channel has paid 1 Million Dollar for this rare video..What a video”

Alt News received several requests to fact-check this on WhatsApp (+917600011160) and on our official Android application.

Fact-check

We performed a reverse image search on Yandex using InVid, a video verification tool, and found that the clip from the 2017 TV movie ‘5 Headed Shark Attack’.

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Using this as a clue, we performed a keyword search on YouTube and found that the official trailer of the film was posted by YouTube Movies on September 2017. At the 1:05 mark in the trailer, we can see shark bringing down the helicopter.

Social media claims associated with the viral video are false. “National Geographic paid one million dollars” is a popular internet hoax. In 2017, it was shared with a clip from the movie ‘Into the Storm’ which was debunked by Snopes, a US-based fact-checking website.

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About the Author

Archit is a graduate in English Literature from The MS University of Baroda. He also holds a post-graduation diploma in journalism from the Asian College of Journalism. Since then he has worked at Essel Group's English news channel at WION as a trainee journalist, at S3IDF as a fundraising & communications officer and at The Hindu as a reporter. At Alt News, he works as a fact-checking journalist.