Twisters (film)

Twisters is a 2024 American disaster film directed by Lee Isaac Chung from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, based on a story by Joseph Kosinski. Serving as a standalone sequel to Twister (1996), it stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, and Sasha Lane. It follows clashing groups of storm chasers who investigate a tornado outbreak in Oklahoma.
Talks for a sequel to Twister began in 2020, with Kosinski pitching an idea to Universal and Helen Hunt, who starred in the original, also expressing interest in a follow-up that was ultimately rejected. Several directors were approached before Chung was hired in December 2022. The cast joined in early-2023 and filming taking place around Oklahoma that summer, with a brief hiatus due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Twisters premiered at the Cineworld Leicester Square in London on July 8, 2024, and was released internationally by Warner Bros. Pictures on July 10 and in the United States and Canada by Universal Pictures on July 19. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $372 million worldwide.
Meteorology student Kate Carter works in Oklahoma with storm chasers Javi, Praveen, Addy, and Kate's boyfriend Jeb, to test a theory that launching sodium polyacrylate beads into a tornado might reduce its intensity. The attempt is unsuccessful as the tornado suddenly intensifies into an EF5, killing Jeb, Addy, and Praveen while Javi and Kate survive. Wracked with guilt, Kate quits storm chasing.
Five years later, Kate works at an NOAA office in New York City. Javi, working for mobile tornado radar company StormPAR, offers Kate a position with his team to test a new tornado scanning system using phased-array radar. Kate initially declines until Javi sends a news report about a tornado that destroyed a town. Kate and Javi join the StormPAR team in Oklahoma, including Javi's business partner Scott. Meanwhile, popular YouTube storm chaser Tyler Owens, known as the "Tornado Wrangler", also arrives from Arkansas looking to capitalize on a predicted tornado outbreak. Tyler is joined by his crew of Boone, Dani, Dexter, and Lily, as well as British journalist Ben who is writing a piece on storm chasing.
StormPAR and Tyler's crew chase an EF1 tornado that touched down on a nearby wind farm, which the StormPAR team intend to scan using three radar scanners. Kate suffers a panic attack, rendering her unable to help Javi set up the final scanner. The next day, the team tracks a storm that produces another EF1 and a satellite that splits off. StormPAR chases the satellite as it intensifies into an EF3; they successfully deploy the scanners, although one is lost to the tornado while Kate and Javi barely escape its path. They drive to the nearby tornado-ravaged town of Crystal Springs to help recovery efforts, along with Tyler's crew. Having initially dismissed Tyler and his team as glory hounds, Kate is surprised to learn they use merchandise profits to aid tornado victims while StormPAR investor Marshall Riggs profiteers from StormPAR's work by purchasing tornado-damaged land at low prices.
That night, Tyler invites Kate to a nearby rodeo in Stillwater. An EF4 tornado rapidly develops with little warning, forcing Kate, Tyler, and others to take shelter in an empty motel pool. In the aftermath, Kate confronts Javi about Riggs' intentions, causing an offended Javi to blame her for their friends' deaths. Distraught, Kate retreats to her mother's farm in Sapulpa. Tyler follows her and uncovers Kate's past research. Kate initially declines Tyler's offer to help retry the experiment but later accepts when Tyler points out it can still give people a fighting chance against tornadoes. The next day, they release the beads into a passing tornado, but it fails to dissipate. Using data scans provided by an apologetic Javi, Kate hypothesizes launching silver iodide into the tornado to ensure dissipation.
Kate joins Tyler and his team as they track a tornado near El Reno, with the StormPAR team also in pursuit. The tornado becomes rain-wrapped and nearly hits Javi and Scott, who escape as the tornado catches fire from hitting an oil refinery. The tornado rapidly intensifies into a mile-wide EF5 that begins shifting towards El Reno. As Kate and the Wranglers head into town, Javi abandons Scott, quits his partnership with Riggs and StormPAR, and heads to El Reno to help after finally realizing how callous Riggs and his team are.
Kate, Tyler, and their team, learning that shelters are full, evacuate the remaining townspeople into a movie theater when a derailed streetcar and debris traps Tyler. As Kate struggles to free him, Javi arrives to help save Tyler. With no basement to take shelter in and the tornado heading straight for the theater, Kate drives Tyler's truck into the tornado's center. She fires the silver iodide into it, and after a brief struggle with the controls, she successfully launches the polyacrylate beads. The tornado rips the theater open, nearly pulling Lily and Tyler out, but the countermeasures take effect and the tornado dissipates.
Sometime later, as Kate waits at the airport for her flight back to New York City, Tyler shows up and attempts to persuade Kate to stay. Upon learning a tornado has delayed her flight, Kate departs with Tyler to storm chase. A closing montage shows that Ben's story focused on Kate and that Kate, Tyler, Javi, and the Wranglers have started a new tornado radar business.
In 2020, Joseph Kosinski met with Amblin Entertainment and the Kennedy/Marshall Company to pitch a follow-up to the 1996 film Twister revolving around a "new generation" of storm chasers. In June 2020, Universal Pictures announced it was meeting with writers to develop the reboot, with Frank Marshall attached as a producer and Kosinski in early negotiations as director. Around the same time, the studio rejected plans from Twister actress Helen Hunt to direct a sequel. That version, written by Hunt, Rafael Casal, and Daveed Diggs, who collaborated on the television series Blindspotting, would have followed "all black and brown storm chasers", members of a rocket science club at a historically black college and university. In October 2022, Amblin, Universal, and Warner Bros. met with directors for Twisters, a sequel being fast-tracked for an early 2023 production start after Steven Spielberg, an executive producer of the original film, expressed enthusiasm for a script by Mark L. Smith. Filmmaking couple Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Travis Knight, and Dan Trachtenberg were in talks to helm the project, Kosinski having dropped out to direct F1 (2025). The studio reportedly wanted Hunt to reprise her role, with the hopes of the story focusing on the daughter of her and Bill Paxton's characters.
In December 2022, Lee Isaac Chung was hired to direct the now standalone sequel. Chung's pitch to Marshall, Spielberg, and executive producer Jay Sandberg included a presentation that intercut footage from Twister and his own Minari, a semi-autobiographical indie drama that cost $2 million, specifically a scene in which characters experience a tornado watch. Chung credited his time at Lucasfilm directing an episode of The Mandalorian as accustoming him to projects with visual effects and noted growing up in tornado alley as inspiration. In preparation for Twisters, he revisited the original film; Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and War of the Worlds (2005) (described by him as "movies about powerful forces of nature or monstrous things coming at you or looming above you"); "driving movies" such as The French Connection (1971) and Gone in 60 Seconds (2000); and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) and Ran (1985) (for inspiration in capturing weather through camera movement). Character dynamics were influenced by the films of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks, especially It Happened One Night (1934) and The Big Sky (1952). Chung was inspired to approach Glen Powell for a lead role after seeing an appearance of his on an episode of the morning show Today; Powell was contacted while filming Anyone but You (2023) in Australia to do a chemistry read with Daisy Edgar-Jones over Zoom. Edgar-Jones suggested that her character, Kate, have a camera, in reference to the documentary Fire of Love (2022) about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft; the character was partially inspired by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Cast members attended a "weather boot camp" to learn about tornadoes from meteorologists and storm chasers. The program was organized by meteorologist and former NOAA analyst Kevin Kelleher, a technical advisor on both Twister films. Paxton's son, James, has a cameo as a motel guest who tries driving away from a tornado.
Principal photography was initially set for the state of Georgia, outside Atlanta, for budgetary reasons. Instead, it commenced in May 2023 in Oklahoma, where the story takes place, marking Chung's return to the state after Minari. The move cost the crew work days and resulted in the removal of some storm sequences. Filming was to take place at Prairie Surf Studios for 40 days and in metro Oklahoma City for 50 days. Ultimately, the shoot took 60 days, approximately 70 percent of which was spent capturing driving scenes. Other locations included the towns of Burbank, Calumet, Cashion, Chickasha, Fairview, Hinton, Kingfisher, Kremlin, El Reno, Midwest City, Okarche, Pawhuska, and Spencer. Filming was suspended in July due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. As six weeks of prep time were necessary to resume production, despite only having three weeks of material to film, the crew began prepping sets before the strike was over. Production resumed with the strike's conclusion in November and wrapped the following month. Dan Mindel was the cinematographer. Patrick Sullivan, who worked on the original film's art department, was the production designer.
Twisters was shot on 35 mm film, at Chung's request after receiving support from Spielberg and Mindel, with Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 and handheld Arriflex 435 and 235 cameras from Arri, using Panavision T-Series, C-Series and Primo anamorphic lenses. In preparation for the film, Mindel watched Westerns, road films, and films produced during the Golden Age of Hollywood set in rural America. He listed The Last Picture Show (1971) as an influence on the film's "Americana" style. Dailies were processed in Los Angeles, so the crew could not review their footage for several days. To maintain continuity, Mindel aimed to film under overcast weather, unless the script asked for blue skies. Because the shoot occurred during tornado season, delays were frequent. "It was happening every three days or so," Chung recalled, "We were always getting shut down—lightning, wind storms, and then storms that were producing tornadoes came through as well." Challenges arose in El Reno due to heat waves, lightning storms, and strong winds, as well as the presence of "a jet engine on set that you could barely talk over" and the need for a bright, hot key light to produce the "feeling of a storm-like sky", according to Chung. A set of an El Reno farmer's market was destroyed by a storm with 80-mile-per-hour winds, forcing the crew to rebuild it so they could destroy it again for a scene. A former military meteorologist was hired to monitor weather conditions with a squad of radar watchers, and film safety experts enforced protocols for shutting down production and sheltering when necessary.
The prologue was shot during the first week. It utilized practical effects such as hail, rain, and wind machines to simulate the storm, though the overpass that characters hide under was enclosed in blue screen. While parts of the sequence were filmed on location, the overpass was rebuilt on a makeshift studio backlot near Prairie Surf Studios. Three locations—Crystal Springs, Stillwater, and El Reno–are ravaged in the film by tornadoes. Scenes set in El Reno were filmed on location, while a 4-block stretch of land in Chickasha stood in for Crystal Springs and Midwest City portrayed Stillwater. Early versions of the script had the Stillwater tornado surround a college baseball game, but Chung suggested changing it to a rodeo. The pool of the motel where characters take shelter was constructed for the film; a hole was dug out of the motel's lawn and, since the pool is empty, no plumbing was required. After the shoot, the pool was removed and the hole was filled to restore the lawn. The theater sequence was shot on soundstages at Prairie Surf, using vintage seats from a closed Colorado movie theater; exterior shots were filmed in El Reno. It was Chung's decision for the characters to be viewing Frankenstein (1931), a reference to Universal's "monsters" franchise. Kate's mother's farmhouse was located in the town of Howe. The accompanying barn was initially a metal shed, which the art department skinned with wood from Missouri to resemble an Oklahoma barn. The barn's interior was built at Prairie Surf. Two versions of the ending were filmed; one where Kate and Tyler kiss, and the one in the film, in which they do not. Spielberg suggested the non-kiss take to solidify that Kate's character arc was about her returning passion for storm chasing.
The film's tornadoes were created using special and visual effects, referencing footage of supercell clouds and real tornadoes shot by technical consultants, including storm chaser Sean Casey. The tornado in the finale was inspired by the 2013 El Reno tornado, the 2021 Western Kentucky tornado, and a wedge tornado that struck Kansas in 2023. Scott R. Fisher and Ben Snow were the special and visual effects supervisors, respectively. Special effects included wind fans running at around 70 miles per hour; two jet engines operating further away from the sets at 170-to-180 miles per hour; dump tanks; high-pressure pneumatic water cannons; and polyacrylamide for hail. Visual effects were handled by Industrial Light & Magic. Terilyn A. Shropshire was the editor. Chung said the most challenging part about making Twisters was balancing the tone because he wanted to entertain audiences while simultaneously taking the natural disasters seriously due to their real-world impacts. In June 2023, amid filming, The Oklahoman reported the production budget for Twisters as nearing $200 million. In July 2024, the budget was listed as $155 million before print and advertising costs.
Benjamin Wallfisch composed the film's score. The soundtrack, Twisters: The Album, was released on July 19, 2024, on CD, LP, and digital download by Atlantic Records. It features 29 songs from primarily country acts, including Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert, Bailey Zimmerman, Megan Moroney, Tucker Wetmore, Tanner Adell, Jelly Roll, and others. Combs' "Ain't No Love in Oklahoma" led the soundtrack as a single on May 16, with few singles released in the subsequent weeks prior to the film's release.
Twisters premiered at Cineworld Leicester Square in London on July 8, 2024. Notably attending the event was Tom Cruise, who worked with Powell on Top Gun: Maverick in 2022. The film also screened at the Taormina Film Fest in Italy in July 2024. The film was released in the United States by Universal Pictures on July 19, 2024, and early in some international markets by Warner Bros. Pictures, beginning on July 10. It was also released through digital formats on August 13, 2024, and on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (both under Studio Distribution Services) on October 22.
The Twisters soundtrack accumulated over 175 million streams between May 29 and its theatrical release; Universal released one song per week for ten weeks, then a song per day the final week. In addition, the studio partnered with radio personality Bobby Bones. Sporting events were significant in raising awareness to the film. Universal worked with NASCAR for co-branded promo as well as MLB, Copa América, and WWE. The 30-second television spot broadcast during Super Bowl LVIII amassed 29.2 million views in a day and was among the year's most-watched Super Bowl trailers. Commercials for the film aired during events for All Elite Wrestling, NASCAR, the Olympic Trials, UEFA Euro Cup, UFC, and the WNBA. Universal strategically put tickets on sales during the first game of the 2024 NBA Finals, made content with Dodge RAM and Wrangler, and had the cast participate in a cross-country promotional tour that exceeded New York and Los Angeles and made stops in Dallas, Chicago, and Miami. Special screenings were held in Oklahoma and military bases, and discussions were held between the cast and meteorologists. As a result of the marketing, Deadline Hollywood noted that the film's top-grossing cities during its opening weekend were Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio, and that theater chains in Middle America like B&B Theatres and Santikos Theatres surged over annual norms. The publication also said the film's "not political" standing (by not referring to climate change) appealed to "red states"; despite it, PostTrak reported that of opening weekend moviegoers, 16% were registered Democrats while 7% were registered Republicans. The highest-grossing theater that weekend was Regal Warren in Moore, Oklahoma, at over $130,000.
Twisters grossed $267.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $104.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $372.3 million.
In the United States and Canada, Twisters was projected to gross $40–55 million from 4,151 theaters in its opening weekend. After it made $32.1 million on its first day, including an estimated $10.7 million from Wednesday and Thursday previews, projections were raised to $75 million. It went on to debut to $81.3 million, the best-ever opening weekend for a natural disaster film, surpassing The Day After Tomorrow (2004). At the time, the film had the third-highest opening weekend of 2024, behind Inside Out 2 ($154.2 million) and Dune: Part Two ($82.5 million). Of that opening, $2.1 million came from 4DX screenings, a record for the format, surpassing The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023); this record was surpassed the following week by Deadpool & Wolverine.
Because of its success in the format, Twisters returned to 4DX theaters alongside the original film from August 30 to September 5. The film earned $35 million and $22.8 million in its second and third weekends, respectively, both times behind Deadpool & Wolverine. During its seventh weekend, as the film was released on PVOD, the film ranked number three at the box office and experienced a 27% box office increase from the previous week. The film's domestic performance was credited to Universal's marketing, which sold the movie on Powell's star power and the option to see the film on 4DX; of its total earnings, only 27.8% came from international markets (for reference, the original Twister earned half of its box office internationally).
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of 392 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Summoning a storm of spectacle and carried along by the gale force winds of Glen Powell's charisma, Twisters' forecast is splendid with a high chance of thrills." According to the website, critics felt that Chung added "more substance" to the film and praised the film's visuals and "unexpectedly well-handled romantic twist", calling it a "rousing piece of summer blockbuster cinema". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 65 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale, the same score as the first film, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it 4.5 out of five stars.
Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph gave it a score of five out of five, writing that it "vastly improves on [the original] in all regards". Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Jordan Hoffman gave the film a "A-" grade, saying "There's a ton of technobabble that you have to take on faith, but Jones and Powell do more than sell it; they make it compelling". IndieWire's David Ehrlich gave the film a "B+" grade and said "And for all of the unearned goodwill that Twisters extends to viral content creators, it still makes one of this summer's most emphatic arguments in favor of the big screen experience". Donald Clarke of The Irish Times gave it a rating of three out of five, explaining that "A sequel, while no masterpiece, feels perfectly serviceable in the era of lore-addicted trash such as Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire".
Owen Gleiberman of Variety gave the film a mixed review. He praised the performances of Powell and Edgar-Jones, but suggested the film was not as innovative as the original film given the prevalence of the Internet and actual videos of tornadoes freely available. He wrote, "Staring up at the tornadoes in Twisters, I felt like I'd already seen something exactly like them — and that when it comes to footage of actual tornadoes, I'd already seen something more incredible".
The producers of Twisters consulted with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during development, with the federal agency contributing logos and props. The agency added that its contribution to scientific accuracy was only reflected "in some parts" of the film. A scientific review in The New York Times pointed out impossibilities with the film's mechanism for dissipating tornadoes, observing that the method suggested would require many tons of the chemicals used and require a much longer period. A professor at Texas A&M University also remarked: "it's highly unlikely that the small-scale methods depicted in the movie would have any real impact on tornadoes. To my knowledge, no one is actively pursuing such an approach". An article in Wired noted that the "twin" tornadoes featured in the film do occur in real-life as multiple-vortex tornadoes, drawing comparison to the Dunlap, Indiana tornado during the 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak.
Writer Margaret Renkl criticized the film for not mentioning the link between climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of tornadoes. Despite Smith's intent for the screenplay to incorporate the effects of climate change, Chung explained his decision to avoid explicitly referring to climate change as wanting "to make sure that we are never creating a feeling that we're preaching a message." According to Chung, Universal wanted him to put forward a clear message about climate change, but scientific advisors on the project suggested that he be more measured, because the link between tornado severity and climate change remains unclear.