Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment are said to be meeting with potential directors for Twisters, the sequel to the 1996 cult-classic movie Twister, starring the late Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. Universal is co-financing Twisters along with Warner Bros. Pictures, with veteran producer Frank Marshall attached. The more interesting note in the report from The Dish is that it is Steven Spielberg’s love of the script by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) that has brought in Amblin and helped put Twisters on the fast track to production in 2023.
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Among the potential directors noted in Deadline’s report are Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi, the duo that won an Oscar for their 2018 sports adventure documentary Free Solo. Also mentioned is Dan Trachtenberg, who is currently enjoying acclaim for his successful re-invention of the Predator franchise with his period piece thriller Prey, which generated big buzz for Disney/Hulu earlier this year. Interestingly, Travis Knight of Laika was mentioned; he made the jump from animation (Kubo and the Two Strings) to live-action blockbusters with the 2018 Transformers reboot Bumblebee.
All in all, it’s a pretty solid lineup of directors who could deliver spectacle and a gripping human story that no doubt resonated with Steven Spielberg.
The original Twister was co-written by Michael Crichton and produced by Kathleen Kennedy – it was directed by Jan de Bont, who had blown up thanks to his work on Speed two years earlier. Twister was a blockbuster spectacle that heralded a lot of upcoming trends in movie-making, including CGI post-production (courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic), and a global box office haul of $494.5 million, making it the second-highest-grossing movie of 1996.
Here is a pretty dramatic retelling of the film’s plot, courtesy of IMDb:
The year is 1969. In Oklahoma County, thunderstorms roll across an open plain, and in a remote farmhouse young Jo and her family are about to go to sleep, but her father is watching a tornado warning on TV. The TV warns that the imminent tornado may be an F5, the strongest known. Not long after the family reaches the storm cellar the huge twister hits, passing right over top of them & killing her father. 27 years later, Jo is now a storm scientist, trying to develop a tornado warning system with her soon-to-be-ex, Bill Harding. Multiple attempts fail for one reason or another, and their team sees a tremendous amount of damage & death. Then, one time, they find themselves In the damage path of a huge F5 tornado. Can they succeed in launching their test equipment, then escape the deadly storm in time?
Twisters is being tracked to start production in 2023.
Source: Deadline
