Twisters (film)

Twisters is a 2024 American disaster film serving as a standalone sequel to Twister (1996). The film was directed by Lee Isaac Chung from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, based on a story by Joseph Kosinski. The ensemble cast includes 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 Pictures 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 took 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 $372.3 million worldwide.

Plot

Kate Carter works in Oklahoma with storm chasers Javi, Addy, Praveen, and her boyfriend, Jeb. Alongside a Dorothy V doppler, the team launches barrels of sodium polyacrylate beads into a tornado in hopes of reducing its intensity and securing funding for further research. However, the amount of chemicals is insufficient to stop it and the crew is caught in the middle as it intensifies into an EF5. Addy, Praveen, and Jeb are killed, while Kate and Javi survive.

Five years later, Kate works at a NOAA office in New York City. Javi, working for mobile tornado radar company Storm Par, offers Kate a one-week position with his team to test a new tornado scanning system using phased-array radar. Kate only accepts after Javi sends a news report about a tornado destroying a town. Kate and Javi join the Storm Par team in Oklahoma, which includes Javi's business partner Scott. Popular YouTube storm chaser Tyler Owens, known as the "Tornado Wrangler", also arrives in Oklahoma 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.

Storm Par and Tyler's crew chase an EF1 tornado that has touched down in a nearby wind farm. Kate experiences a panic attack, rendering her unable to help Javi set up the final scanner and she instead drives away. The team tracks another storm which produces another EF1, that also produces a Satellite that splits off. Storm Par chases the Satellite after noticing that it is intensifying, but as it reaches EF3 strength, it takes out the third scanner. Kate and Javi barely escape and drive to the nearby tornado-ravaged town of Crystal Springs to help recovery efforts, along with Tyler's crew. Having dismissed Tyler and his team as glory hounds, Kate is surprised to learn they use merchandise profits to aid tornado victims, while Storm Par investor Marshall Riggs profiteers by purchasing tornado-damaged land.

Tyler invites Kate to a nearby rodeo in Stillwater, where they begin bonding. When a large tornado hits, Kate leads Tyler and nearby residents to shelter in an empty motel pool. In the aftermath, Kate and Javi argue about Riggs' intentions, causing Javi to blame Kate for their colleagues' deaths. Distraught, Kate retreats to her mother's farm in Sapulpa. Tyler follows and uncovers Kate's previous research regarding the tornado disruption experiment. Kate initially declines Tyler's offer to help retry the experiment but finally accepts. The next day, they release the beads into a passing tornado, but it fails to dissipate. Using scanning data provided by an apologetic Javi, Kate hypothesizes a change in the experiment to correct a previous oversight, namely adding silver iodide.

The team tracks another tornado developing near El Reno. Javi and Scott's truck is knocked on its side and back upright again; they escape just as the tornado catches fire after striking an oil refinery. The tornado explodes in size becoming a mile-wide EF5 that heads towards El Reno. Javi attempts to rush to El Reno to help recovery efforts, but Scott pressures him to continue their mission for Riggs. Javi abandons Scott by the road and quits Storm Par.

Kate, Tyler, and their team evacuate the townsfolk into a nearby movie theater. A derailed streetcar and debris traps Tyler. Kate struggles to free him, but with the arrival of Javi, Tyler is rescued. Kate drives Tyler's truck into the tornado's center. She fires the silver iodide into the tornado, and after a brief struggle with the controls, she launches the polyacrylite beads also, but the vehicle is overturned. The tornado rips the theater open, nearly pulling Lily and Tyler out just as the measures take effect, weakening the tornado. The team rescues Kate and celebrates the dissipating tornado.

Sometime later, as Kate waits at the airport for her plane to New York, Tyler catches up with her to reconcile with her. Upon learning that flights have been delayed because of strong winds, the two swiftly depart for the storm. A closing montage shows that Kate, Javi, and Tyler have joined in a new tornado radar business and that Ben's story focused on Kate instead of Tyler.

Cast

Production

Development

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 Ashley 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 Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). For Kate's wardrobe, Lee said that Edgar-Jones drew inspiration from the "bad-ass women of cinema", which included Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Ellen Ripley from Alien (1979) and Louise Sawyer and Thelma Dickinson from Thelma & Louise (1991). 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. Powell's parents also appear as cameos during the rodeo scene, an occurrence that previously happened in all of his films, starting with Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003).