A Twister sequel is coming, and it’s called—wait for it—Twisters

A pair of F5 tornadoes are heading to a theater near you, but will Helen Hunt join them?

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  October 17, 2022 | 10:42pm
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A Twister sequel is coming, and it’s called—wait for it—Twisters
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Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt Photo:

Nearly 30 years after Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt proved that a good leather belt is more powerful than the finger of God, weather is coming back for seconds. Steven Spielberg and the nostalgia hounds at Amblin gave the green light to Twisters, a sequel to the 1996 meteorological hit Twister, putting our decades-long journey to find out what happened to Helen Hunt’s character’s father to a close. Well, hopefully.

Deadline reports that while Spielberg “flipped” for the script by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), Helen Hunt has not signed on for the sequel. Obviously, Dr. Jo Harding fans would love to see the good doctor behind the wheel of a beat-up Jeep, chasing down F2s and F3s across tornado alley, but that might not be in the cards. So instead, the movie will focus on Hunt’s character’s daughter (because how else would make a sequel if not about someone’s kid) and presumably how one deals with not one twister but several—no word on whether the cow will return.

As for who will direct all these spinning cyclones of wind, dust, and farm animals is still up in the air. Joseph Kosinski, Hollywood’s legacy-sequel golden boy in the wake of Top Gun: Maverick, was set to direct before being lured away by Brad Pitt’s Top Gun about Formula One racing. How that didn’t end up being a Days Of Thunder sequel is anyone’s guess, especially with the title “Another Day Of Thunder” just hanging from the tree waiting for a plucking.

Deadline reports that Amblin is interested in Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi (Free Solo), Laika’s Travis Knight (Kubo And The Two Strings), and Dan Trachtenberg, who knocked it out of the park a few months ago with his Predator movie, Prey.

Twister’s cast is something to reckon with, and unfortunately, it’s also made a sequel a tough sell. Hunt’s co-star Bill Paxton died in 2017, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who turns up in an endlessly charming and funny supporting role, died in 2014. Other cast members, including Alan Ruck and Joey Slotnick, have not announced they’re joining the cast. And neither has Todd Field, the director of Tár, who was also apparently in Twister.

When Amblin and Universal last announced the sequel in 2020, the studio claimed that it would be a reboot, not a sequel. This followed an intense backlash the announcement received due to the idea of someone making a Twister movie without Paxton or Hoffman. However, this did lead many to the IMDB listening for Twister 2: The Terror Continues, a film that features “footage of real tornadoes without any coherent story.”

Ultimately, it’s a shame that James Cameron wasn’t around to turn the “S” in Twisters into a dollar sign. That would really move the needle on this thing.

Update: Dan Trachtenberg confirmed on Twitter that he is “not making a TWISTER.”

 
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