Spring is here. Which means the midwest is more susceptible to tornadic activity. One of the most beloved storm-chasing films is the 1996 Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton classic Twister. Earlier, it was announced that a sequel was in the works involving Jo and Bill’s daughter. Daisy Edgar-Jones, known for Where the Crawdads Sing and Normal People, is slated to star. However, the plot has been changed and will no longer involve a spin-off of any of the characters from the original film. Deadline is now reporting that joining Edgar-Jones for the new disaster film is one of the breakout stars of Top Gun: Maverick, Glen Powell.
Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment will be once again producing the sequel, with Frank Marshall returning to produce through his and Kathleen Kennedy’s production company. The story now involves Edgar-Jones as a former storm chaser who works a desk job after surviving a disastrous tornado encounter. However, she will soon be forced to return to work in the field and begin a new journey in storm chasing.
The upcoming installment is to be a “new chapter” in the IP, which was originally brought to us by author extraordinaire Michael Crichton, who co-wrote the first movie’s screenplay, and the director of Speed, Jan De Bont. The new film will be penned by the writer of The Revenant, Mark L. Smith, while the director of Minari, Lee Issac Chung is attached to direct the cyclone mayhem this time around.
This film also is being made in the wake of a rejected idea for a Twister 2 that was being developed by Helen Hunt to direct. She was planning to make it with Grammy and Tony winner Daveed Diggs and his Blindspotting co-writer Rafael Casal writing. Hunt revealed in 2021, “I tried to get it made. With Daveed and Rafael and me writing it, and all Black and brown storm chasers, and they wouldn’t do it. I was going to direct it… We could barely get a meeting, and this is in June of 2020 when it was all about diversity. It would have been so cool. … There was a (Historically Black College and University) where we wanted it to take place, and a rocket science club. In this one, they shoot the rockets into the tornado. It was going to be so cool.”