Twisters -The movie

In June 2020, a remake of Twister (1996) was announced to be in development from the original film’s international distributor Universal Pictures, with Joseph Kosinski in early negotiations to serve as director.

Frank Marshall and Sara Scott were set to serve as producers on the project. In June 2021, Helen Hunt expressed interest in developing a sequel to the original film. The studio rejected Hunt’s plans for writing and directing it, due to her character being killed off for the sequel.

In October 2022, Twisters was announced to be in the works with a script written by Mark L. Smith, and produced by Marshall, while directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Dan Trachtenberg, and Travis Knight were in talks to helm the project; there was hope that Hunt would reprise her role, and it was reported that it would focus on the daughter of her and Bill Paxton’s characters.

The film incorporates climate change into the plot. Smith explained: “That’s one of the things that we kind of tapped, and it’s true. I talked to so many storm experts, tornado experts, storm chasers, and rode around with some. Even the tornado season itself, because of climate change, what used to be tornado alley going through a certain stretch.

It now extends so further east, and it’s moving across, and the dates are wider, and the numbers are higher, and the storms themselves are more violent. So we did use elements of that just to shine a light on it, as well, the causes and effects of climate change”.

In December, Lee Isaac Chung was hired to direct. The standalone sequel is a joint-venture production between Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and the Kennedy/Marshall Company, with Universal and Warner Bros. switching distribution positions with the former taking North America and the latter to foreign continents.