“Twisters” is nearly here and thanks to the Super Bowl, we now have our first look at the long-awaited sequel. Watch it above.
The spot is pretty much what you’d expect – a pair of storm hunters, this time Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones stepping into the muddy shoes of the dearly departed Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, going after the biggest and scariest storms imaginable. Powell plays Tyler, a cocky storm chaser with a big social media following, who teams up with Kate, a former storm chaser who lost her friends in college during a tornado chase gone wrong and is now back to face her fear and to test a potentially groundbreaking new tracking system.
The visual effects have been appropriately updated, giving us even more fearsome forecasts. And the supporting cast – which includes Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane, Maura Tiernery, Kiernan Shipka, David Corenswet, Tunde Adebimpe and Katy O’Brian – seems to replicate the fun and colorful band of characters that populated the first film back in 1996.
This new film, described as a standalone sequel to the original film, was directed by “Minari” filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung and written by Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant,” the unmade Quentin Tarantino “Star Trek” film). It was produced by Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley and executive produced by Steven Spielberg.
“Twister” was directed by Jan de Bont from a screenplay by Michael Crichton and his then-wife Anne-Marie Martin, an actress who had a brief role in Crichton’s “Runaway.” (The screenplay was notoriously problematic and saw re-writes from Joss Whedon, Steve Zallian, Jeff Nathanson and others.) The would-be blockbuster co-starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes, Jami Gertz, Alan Ruck, Jeremy Davies and Todd Field and featured groundbreaking visual effects courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic. It inspired a pinball machine and a popular Universal Studios attraction (Twister … Ride It Out!) at Universal Studios Florida.
Development on the sequel began in 2020, with “Top Gun: Maverick” filmmaker Joseph Kosinski, but by 2022, the hunt for a new director was eventually chosen, with filmmakers Dan Trachtenberg, Travis Knight and the team of Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi all up for the assignment (with Chung ultimately getting the gig).
“Twisters,” released by Universal Pictures and Warner Bros., will be released on July 19.
