Twister Director Reflects on Film Over 25 Years Later, “It’s a Movie That Cannot Be Remade”

Twister helped to redefine the blockbuster action films of the 1990s, and the process of bringing that film to life is one that will likely never be replicated. Jan de Bont’s storm thriller remains a classic to this day, a wildly successful film that broke new ground with its practical effects and gave theatergoers something unlike they’d ever seen before. It’s also something we won’t see again, due in large part to the evolution of special effects in filmmaking.

Speaking to Inverse about Twister, 27 years after it was released, de Bont explained why so much of the movie won’t be able to be replicated in Hollywood today.

“When things fell from the sky, there were real things falling from a helicopter,” he explained. “If you film a car escaping a tornado in a hail storm, it was real ice that came at us. It’s a movie that cannot be remade… That would never, ever happen again.”

The process of bringing Twister to life was both complicated and expensive, but it helped the industry make great strides when it came to visual effects. While there were a lot of difficult practical effects, Industrial Light & Magic took them to new heights with their VFX tornadoes. Getting the enormous funding for Twister apparently hinged on making the storms look real, which ILM was able to do.

“Every shot was a fortune,” said de Bont. “It would take three days to transfer all that information onto film. Right now it’s fast, but in the beginning, it was super slow. And we had to be careful to get the shots done before the movie opened.”

Twister Sequel Hitting Theaters in 2024

After years of Twister sequel discussions, a follow-up film is finally set to debut in theaters in 2024. The film is called Twisters and it’s being directed by Minari filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung, with a screenplay from Mark L. Smith. The film’s all-star cast includes Anthony Ramos, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Kiernan Shipka, Glen Powell, David Corenswet, Sasha Lane, Katy M. O’Brian, Maura Tierney, and Brandon Perea.

The way that the studio system has revolved around remakes and sequels in recent years, de Bont was confident Twister would eventually get revisited. 

“It made so much money for the studio,” he said of the original 1996 blockbuster. “Sooner or later they would do it.”

He went on to say that he’s looking forward to seeing what Chung does with the sequel (even if he has to have someone else watch it first). Chung has the opportunity to bring a totally different perspective to the concept, much like Greta Gerwig did for Barbie.

“It might be a totally different approach,” he said. “That’s the same with [Greta Gerwig] of Barbie. Nobody would ever have thought she’d direct that movie and make it so successful.”

Barbie has gone one to be one of the biggest box office hits in years. Plenty of folks are hoping Twisters will follow the same path.

Twisters is currently set to hit theaters on July 19, 2024.