Twister Sequel Adds Top Gun: Maverick Star Glen Powell

Fresh off his star-making appearance in Top Gun: Maverick, actor Glen Powell is about to book another major gig. According to Deadline, Powell is in talks to star in the upcoming Twisters, a sequel to the 1996 feature film Twister. Powell will appear opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones in the sequel. It’s unclear exactly who the Devotion actor will play in the film but a previous report noted that his co-star will play “a former storm chaser who, after surviving a disastrous tornado encounter, now works a desk job. However, she will soon be forced to, you guessed it, go out into the breach once more.” Considering Powell is co-starring, perhaps he’s the one that recruits her to return.

Minari‘s Lee Isaac Chung will direct Twisters which features a script by The Revenant‘s Mark L. Smith. Frank Marshall, known for the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World franchises, is producing via his banner, the Kennedy/Marshall Company. Production on Twisters is expected to begin this year with a July 19, 2024 release date previously announced by Universal Pictures.

The 1996 Universal/Amblin action movie Twister starred Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. Though it gained generally positive if mixed reviews upon release, Twister would go on to gross over $495 million at the global box office and become a blockbuster phenomenon (even spawning an experience at Universal Studios Orlando Resort). Twister would go onto be nominated for two Academy Awards after its release, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.  The original Twister also starred Jami Gertz, Cary Elwes, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Todd Field, and Jeremy Davies.

Speed director Jan de Bont was the man behind the camera for the original film, even offering a reaction to the sequel news back in 2020.

“I read that like a month or two ago. I said, ‘Wow. Are they going to do the F5 now? I bet you that’s what it is,’” de Bont said during a recent interview. “You cannot do it by making it bigger. That as a movie hardly ever works. You have to come up … with people actually involved in it. You cannot just … it’s like, I’ll work on the destruction scene. We’re going to get worse and whole cities are going to get destroyed. That’s exactly like falling in the trap of having the special effects completely take over.”