Twisters | |
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Directed by | Lee Isaac Chung |
Screenplay by | Mark L. Smith |
Story by | Joseph Kosinski |
Based on | Characters by |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Dan Mindel |
Edited by | Terilyn A. Shropshire |
Music by | Benjamin Wallfisch |
Production companies | |
Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 122 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $155 million |
Box office | $371 million [2] [3] |
Twisters is a 2024 American disaster film directed by Lee Isaac Chung from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, based on a story by Joseph Kosinski. Serving as a standalone sequel to Twister (1996), it stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, and Sasha Lane. It follows clashing groups of storm chasers who investigate a tornado outbreak in Oklahoma.
Talks for a sequel to Twister began in 2020, with Kosinski pitching an idea to Universal and Helen Hunt, who starred in the original, also expressing interest in a follow-up that was ultimately rejected. Several directors were approached before Chung was hired in December 2022. The cast joined in early-2023 and filming taking place around Oklahoma that summer, with a brief hiatus due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Twisters premiered at the Cineworld Leicester Square in London on July 8, 2024, and was released internationally by Warner Bros. Pictures on July 10 and in the United States and Canada by Universal Pictures on July 19. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $371 million worldwide.
Kate Carter is a PhD candidate working in Oklahoma with storm chaser s Javi, Addy, Praveen, and Kate's boyfriend, Jeb to prove a theory that launching sodium polyacrylate beads into a tornado might reduce its intensity, in hopes of securing funding for further research. The attempt is unsuccessful due to the tornado suddenly intensifying into an EF5, killing Jeb, Addy and Praveen while Javi and Kate survive. Wracked with guilt over underestimating the tornado and feeling responsible for the deaths of her friends, Kate quits storm chasing.
Five years later, Kate works at a NOAA office in New York City. Javi, now working for mobile tornado radar company Storm Par, offers Kate a one-week position with his team to test a new tornado scanning system using phased-array radar. Kate initially declines but has a change of heart after Javi sends a news report about a tornado that destroyed a town without warning and assures her that they have a chance to save lives. Kate and Javi join the Storm Par team in Oklahoma, including Javi's business partner Scott. Popular YouTube storm chaser Tyler Owens, known as the "Tornado Wrangler", also arrives in Oklahoma from Arkansas looking to capitalize on a predicted tornado outbreak. Tyler is joined by his crew of Boone, Dani, Dexter, and Lily, as well as British journalist Ben.
Storm Par and Tyler's crew chase an EF1 tornado that has touched down in a nearby wind farm, which the Storm Par team intends to scan using three radar scanners. Kate suffers a panic attack and drives away from the tornado, rendering her unable to help Javi set up the final scanner. The next day, the team tracks another storm which produces another EF1, and a satellite that splits off. Storm Par chases the Satellite as it intensifies into an EF3, and takes out one of the scanners. Kate and Javi barely escape and drive to the nearby tornado-ravaged town of Crystal Springs to help recovery efforts, along with Tyler's crew. Having initially dismissed Tyler and his team as glory hounds, Kate is surprised to learn they use merchandise profits to aid tornado victims, while also learning that Storm Par investor Marshall Riggs profiteers from Storm Par's work by purchasing tornado-damaged land at low prices to re-sell them later for exorbitant amounts.
That night, Tyler invites Kate to a nearby rodeo in Stillwater, where they begin to bond. When an EF4 tornado hits the area, Kate, Tyler, and several others take shelter in an empty motel pool. In the aftermath, Kate confronts Javi about Riggs' intentions and claims Javi is ignorant to the victims being exploited, causing an offended Javi to blame her for their friends' deaths. Distraught, Kate retreats to her mother's farm in Sapulpa. Tyler follows her and uncovers Kate's previous research regarding the tornado disruption experiment five years ago. Kate initially declines Tyler's offer to help retry the experiment, but later accepts when Tyler points out that her experiment can still give people a fighting chance against tornadoes. The next day, they release the beads into a passing tornado, but it fails to dissipate. Using data scans provided by an apologetic Javi, Kate is able to hypothesize a change in the experiment to correct a previous oversight, namely adding silver iodide.
The team tracks another tornado near El Reno. The tornado becomes rain-wrapped, and nearly hits Javi and Scott, who escape just as the tornado catches fire from hitting an oil refinery. The tornado explodes in size, becoming a mile-wide EF5 that begins shifting towards El Reno. As Kate and the Wranglers head into town, Javi decides to follow them, but Scott pressures him into continuing their mission for Riggs. Javi instead abandons Scott by the road, quits his partnership with Riggs and Storm Par, and heads to El Reno.
In El Reno, Kate, Tyler, and their team, learning that all shelters are full, evacuate the remaining townspeople into a nearby movie theater when a derailed streetcar and debris traps Tyler. As Kate struggles to free him, Javi arrives to help save Tyler before a water tower nearly collapses on them. With no basement to take shelter in and the tornado heading straight for the theater, Kate drives Tyler's truck into the tornado's center. She fires the silver iodide into the tornado, and after a brief struggle with the controls, she successfully launches the polyacrylite beads. The tornado rips the theater open, nearly pulling Lily and Tyler out right as the measures take effect, and the tornado dissipates. The team celebrates the experiment's success.
Sometime later, as Kate waits at the airport for her flight back to New York City, Tyler shows up and attempts to persuade Kate to stay in Oklahoma. Although initially declining, Kate departs with Tyler to storm chase upon learning of a nearby tornado that has delayed her flight. A closing montage shows that Ben's story focused on Kate and that Kate, Tyler, and Javi have started a new tornado radar business.
In 2020, Joseph Kosinski met with Amblin Entertainment and the Kennedy/Marshall Company to pitch a follow-up to the 1996 film Twister revolving around a "new generation" of storm chasers. [4] : 5 In June 2020, Universal Pictures announced it was meeting with writers to develop the reboot, with Frank Marshall attached as a producer and Kosinski in early negotiations as director. [5] Around the same time, the studio rejected plans from Twister actress Helen Hunt to direct a sequel. That version, written by Hunt, Rafael Casal, and Daveed Diggs, who collaborated on the television series Blindspotting , would have followed "all black and brown storm chasers", members of a rocket science club at a historically black college and university. [6] [7] In October 2022, Amblin, Universal, and Warner Bros. met with directors for Twisters, a sequel being fast-tracked for an early 2023 production start after Steven Spielberg, an executive producer of the original film, expressed enthusiasm for a script by Mark L. Smith. Filmmaking couple Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Travis Knight, and Dan Trachtenberg were in talks to helm the project, Kosinski having dropped out to direct F1 (2025). The studio reportedly wanted Hunt to reprise her role, with the hopes of the story focusing on the daughter of her and Bill Paxton's characters. [8]
In December 2022, Lee Isaac Chung was hired to direct the now standalone sequel. [10] Chung's pitch to Marshall, Spielberg, and executive producer Jay Sandberg included a presentation that intercut footage from Twister and his own Minari , a semi-autobiographical indie drama that cost $2 million, specifically a scene in which characters experience a tornado watch. [9] [11] [12] Chung credited his time at Lucasfilm directing an episode of The Mandalorian as accustoming him to projects with visual effects and noted growing up in tornado alley as inspiration. [11] [13] In preparation for Twisters, he revisited the original film; Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and War of the Worlds (2005) (described by him as "movies about powerful forces of nature or monstrous things coming at you or looming above you"); "driving movies" such as The French Connection (1971) and Gone in 60 Seconds (2000); and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) and Ran (1985) (for inspiration in capturing weather through camera movement). [4] : 9 [14] Character dynamics were influenced by the films of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks, especially It Happened One Night (1934) and The Big Sky (1952). [12] [15] Chung was inspired to approach Glen Powell for a lead role after seeing an appearance of his on an episode of the morning show Today ; Powell was contacted while filming Anyone but You (2023) in Australia to do a chemistry read with Daisy Edgar-Jones over Zoom. [4] : 13–14 [16] Edgar-Jones suggested that her character, Kate, have a camera, in reference to the documentary Fire of Love (2022) about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft; the character was partially inspired by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939). [14] Cast members attended a "weather boot camp" to learn about tornadoes from meteorologists and storm chasers. The program was organized by meteorologist and former NOAA analyst Kevin Kelleher, a technical advisor on both Twister films. [4] : 6, 12 [17] Paxton's son, James, has a cameo as a motel guest who tries driving away from a tornado. [18] [19]
Principal photography was initially set for the state of Georgia, outside Atlanta, for budgetary reasons. Instead, it commenced in May 2023 in Oklahoma, where the story takes place, marking Chung's return to the state after Minari. [4] : 9–10 [20] [21] The move cost the crew work days and resulted in the removal of some storm sequences. [21] Filming was to take place at Prairie Surf Studios for 40 days and in metro Oklahoma City for 50 days. [22] Ultimately, the shoot took 60 days, approximately 70 percent of which was spent capturing driving scenes. [4] : 9 [17] Other locations included the towns of Burbank, Calumet, Cashion, Chickasha, Fairview, Hinton, Kingfisher, Kremlin, El Reno, Midwest City, Okarche, Pawhuska, and Spencer. [22] [23] Filming was suspended in July due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. [24] As six weeks of prep time were necessary to resume production, despite only having three weeks of material to film, the crew began prepping sets before the strike was over. [4] : 11 Production resumed with the strike's conclusion in November and wrapped the following month. [25] [26] Dan Mindel was the cinematographer. [4] : 29 Patrick Sullivan, who worked on the original film's art department, was the production designer. [4] : 22
Twisters was shot on 35 mm film, at Chung's request after receiving support from Spielberg and Mindel, with Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 and handheld Arriflex 435 and 235 cameras from Arri, using Panavision T-Series, C-Series and Primo anamorphic lenses. [4] : 30 [11] In preparation for the film, Mindel watched Westerns, road films, and films produced during the Golden Age of Hollywood set in rural America. He listed The Last Picture Show (1971) as an influence on the film's "Americana" style. Dailies were processed in Los Angeles, so the crew could not review their footage for several days. To maintain continuity, Mindel aimed to film under overcast weather, unless the script asked for blue skies. [4] : 30 Because the shoot occurred during tornado season, delays were frequent. [27] "It was happening every three days or so," Chung recalled, "We were always getting shut down—lightning, wind storms, and then storms that were producing tornadoes came through as well." [28] Challenges arose in El Reno due to heat waves, lightning storms, and strong winds, as well as the presence of "a jet engine on set that you could barely talk over" and the need for a bright, hot key light to produce the "feeling of a storm-like sky", according to Chung. [21] A set of an El Reno farmer's market was destroyed by a storm with 80-mile-per-hour winds, forcing the crew to rebuild it so they could destroy it again for a scene. [4] : 26–27 [27] The production recruited a former military meteorologist to monitor weather conditions with a squad of radar watchers, and film safety experts enforced protocols for shutting down production and sheltering when necessary. [4] : 10–11
The prologue was shot during the first week. It utilized practical effects such as hail, rain, and wind machines to simulate the storm, though the overpass that characters hide under was enclosed in blue screen. While parts of the sequence were filmed on location, the overpass was rebuilt on a makeshift studio backlot near Prairie Surf Studios. [4] : 21, 28 Three locations—Crystal Springs, Stillwater, and El Reno–are ravaged in the film by tornadoes. Scenes set in El Reno were filmed on location, while a 4-block stretch of land in Chickasha stood in for Crystal Springs and Midwest City portrayed Stillwater. [4] : 23–27 Early versions of the script had the Stillwater tornado surround a college baseball game, but Chung suggested changing it to a rodeo. [4] : 24 The pool of the motel where characters take shelter was constructed for the film; a hole was dug out of the motel's lawn and, since the pool is empty, no plumbing was required. After the shoot, the pool was removed and the hole was filled to restore the lawn. [4] : 26 The theater sequence was shot on soundstages at Prairie Surf, using vintage seats from a closed Colorado movie theater; exterior shots were filmed in El Reno. [4] : 27 [12] It was Chung's decision for the characters to be viewing Frankenstein (1931), a reference to Universal's "monsters" franchise. [12] [29] Kate's mother's farmhouse was located in the town of Howe. The accompanying barn was initially a metal shed, which the art department skinned with wood from Missouri to resemble an Oklahoma barn. The barn's interior was built at Prairie Surf. [4] : 27 Two versions of the ending were filmed; one where Kate and Tyler kiss, and the one in the film, in which they do not. Spielberg suggested the non-kiss take to solidify that Kate's character arc was about her returning passion for storm chasing. [30] [31]
The film's tornadoes were created using special and visual effects, referencing footage of supercell clouds and real tornadoes shot by technical consultants, including storm chaser Sean Casey. The tornado in the finale was inspired by the 2013 El Reno tornado, the 2021 Western Kentucky tornado, and a wedge tornado that struck Kansas in 2023. [4] : 33–34 [12] Scott R. Fisher and Ben Snow were the special and visual effects supervisors, respectively. Special effects included wind fans running at around 70 miles per hour; two jet engines operating further away from the sets at 170-to-180 miles per hour; dump tanks; high-pressure pneumatic water cannons; and polyacrylamide for hail. Visual effects were handled by Industrial Light & Magic. [4] : 34–35 Terilyn A. Shropshire was the editor. [32] Chung said the most challenging part about making Twisters was balancing the tone because he wanted to entertain audiences while simultaneously taking the natural disasters seriously due to their real-world impacts. [21] In June 2023, amid filming, The Oklahoman reported the production budget for Twisters as nearing $200 million. [22] In July 2024, the budget was listed as $155 million before print and advertising costs. [33] [34]
Benjamin Wallfisch composed the film's score. [35] The soundtrack, Twisters: The Album , was released on July 19, 2024, on CD, LP, and digital download by Atlantic Records. [36] [37] It features 29 songs from primarily country acts, including Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert, Bailey Zimmerman, Megan Moroney, Tucker Wetmore, Tanner Adell, Jelly Roll, and others. [38] [39] Combs' "Ain't No Love in Oklahoma" led the soundtrack as a single on May 16, with few singles released in the subsequent weeks prior to the film's release. [38]
Twisters premiered at Cineworld Leicester Square in London on July 8, 2024. Notably attending the event was Tom Cruise, who worked with Powell on Top Gun: Maverick in 2022. [40] The film also screened at the Taormina Film Fest in Italy in July 2024. [41] The film was released in the United States by Universal Pictures on July 19, 2024, and early in some international markets by Warner Bros. Pictures, beginning on July 10. [42] [43] It was also released through digital formats on August 13, 2024. [44]
The 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD were released on October 22, 2024 by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and available on Digital HD from Amazon Video and iTunes on August 13, 2024.
The Twisters soundtrack accumulated over 175 million streams between May 29 and its theatrical release; Universal released one song per week for ten weeks, then a song per day the final week. In addition, the studio partnered with radio personality Bobby Bones. Sporting events were significant in raising awareness to the film. Universal worked with NASCAR for co-branded promo as well as MLB, Copa América, and WWE. The 30-second television spot broadcast during Super Bowl LVIII amassed 29.2 million views in a day and was among the year's most-watched Super Bowl trailers. Commercials for the film aired during events for All Elite Wrestling, NASCAR, the Olympic Trials, UEFA Euro Cup, UFC, and the WNBA. Universal strategically put tickets on sales during the first game of the 2024 NBA Finals, made content with Dodge RAM and Wrangler, and had the cast participate in a cross-country promotional tour that exceeded New York and Los Angeles and made stops in Dallas, Chicago, and Miami. Special screenings were held in Oklahoma and military bases, and discussions were held between the cast and meteorologists. As a result of the marketing, Deadline Hollywood noted that the film's top-grossing cities during its opening weekend were Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio, and that theater chains in Middle America like B&B Theatres and Santikos Theatres surged over annual norms. [45] The publication also said the film's "not political" standing (by not referring to climate change) appealed to "red states"; despite it, PostTrak reported that of opening weekend moviegoers, 16% were registered Democrats while 7% were registered Republicans. The highest-grossing theater that weekend was Regal Warren in Moore, Oklahoma, at over $130,000. [34]
Twisters grossed $267.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $103.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $371 million. [2] [3]
In the United States and Canada, Twisters was initially projected to gross $40–55 million from 4,151 theaters in its opening weekend. [33] [46] After it made $32.1 million on its first day, [47] including an estimated $10.7 million from Wednesday and Thursday previews, projections were raised to $75 million. It went on to debut to $81.3 million, [48] the best-ever opening weekend for a natural disaster film, surpassing The Day After Tomorrow (2004). [34] [49] At the time, the film had the third-highest opening weekend of 2024, behind Inside Out 2 ($154.2 million) and Dune: Part Two ($82.5 million). [50] Of that opening, $2.1 million came from 4DX screenings, a record for the format, surpassing The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023). [51] However, this record would be quickly surpassed the following week by Deadpool & Wolverine when that movie made $2.5 million from 4DX. [52] [53] Because of its success in the format, Twisters returned to 4DX theaters alongside the original film on August 30 and continuing until September 5. [53] The film earned $35 million and $22.8 million in its second and third weekends, respectively, both times behind Deadpool & Wolverine. [54] [55] During its seventh weekend, as the film was released on PVOD, the film ranked number three at the box office and experienced a 27% box office increase from the previous week during its first three days. [56] [57] [58] [59]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 75% of 388 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10.The website's consensus reads: "Summoning a storm of spectacle and carried along by the gale force winds of Glen Powell's charisma, Twisters' forecast is splendid with a high chance of thrills." [60] According to the website, critics felt that Chung added "more substance" to the film and praised the film's visuals and "unexpectedly well-handled romantic twist", calling it a "rousing piece of summer blockbuster cinema". [61] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 65 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. [62] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, the same score as the first film, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it 4.5 out of five stars. [34]
Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph gave it a score of five out of five, writing that it "vastly improves on [the original] in all regards". [63] Writing for Entertainment Weekly , Jordan Hoffman gave the film a "A-" grade, saying "There's a ton of technobabble that you have to take on faith, but Jones and Powell do more than sell it; they make it compelling". [64] IndieWire's David Ehrlich gave the film a "B+" grade and said "And for all of the unearned goodwill that Twisters extends to viral content creators, it still makes one of this summer's most emphatic arguments in favor of the big screen experience". [65] Donald Clarke of The Irish Times gave it a rating of three out of five, explaining that "A sequel, while no masterpiece, feels perfectly serviceable in the era of lore-addicted trash such as Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire ". [66]
Owen Gleiberman of Variety gave the film a mixed review. He praised the performances of Powell and Edgar-Jones, but suggested the film was not as innovative as the original film given the prevalence of the Internet and actual videos of tornadoes freely available. He wrote, "Staring up at the tornadoes in Twisters, I felt like I'd already seen something exactly like them — and that when it comes to footage of actual tornadoes, I'd already seen something more incredible". [67]
The producers of Twisters consulted with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during development, with the federal agency contributing logos and props. [68] The agency added that its contribution to scientific accuracy was only reflected "in some parts" of the film. A scientific review in The New York Times pointed out impossibilities with the film's mechanism for dissipating tornadoes, observing that the method suggested would require many tons of the chemicals used and require a much longer period. [69] A professor at Texas A&M University also remarked: "it's highly unlikely that the small-scale methods depicted in the movie would have any real impact on tornadoes. To my knowledge, no one is actively pursuing such an approach". [70] An article in Wired noted that the "twin" tornadoes featured in the film do occur in real-life as multiple-vortex tornadoes, drawing comparison to the Dunlap, Indiana tornado during the 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak. [71]
Writer Margaret Renkl criticized the film for not mentioning the link between climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of tornadoes. [72] Despite Smith's intent for the screenplay to incorporate the effects of climate change, Chung explained his decision to avoid explicitly referring to climate change as wanting "to make sure that we are never creating a feeling that we're preaching a message." [73] [74] According to Chung, Universal wanted him to put forward a clear message about climate change, but scientific advisors on the project suggested that he be more measured, because the link between tornado severity and climate change remains unclear. [75] [76]
Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
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Hollywood Music in Media Awards | November 20, 2024 | Best Original Song – Feature Film | Luke Dick, Shane McAnally & Lainey Wilson ("Out of Oklahoma") | Pending | [77] |
Music Supervision – Film | Rachel Levy | Pending | |||
Soundtrack Album | Twisters: The Album | Pending | |||
El Reno is a city in and county seat of Canadian County, Oklahoma, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 16,989, marking a change of 1.55% from 16,729, recorded in the 2010 census. The city was begun shortly after the 1889 land rush and named for the nearby Fort Reno. It is located in Central Oklahoma, about 25 miles (40 km) west of downtown Oklahoma City.
Twister is a 1996 American disaster film directed by Jan de Bont, and written by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin. It was produced by Crichton, Kathleen Kennedy, and Ian Bryce, with Steven Spielberg, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, and Gerald R. Molen serving as executive producers. The film stars an ensemble cast that includes Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, and Cary Elwes. It follows a group of storm chasers trying to deploy a tornado research device during a severe outbreak in Oklahoma.
Storm chasing is broadly defined as the deliberate pursuit of any severe weather phenomenon, regardless of motive, but most commonly for curiosity, adventure, scientific investigation, or for news or media coverage. A person who chases storms is known as a storm chaser or simply a chaser.
An anticyclonic tornado is a tornado which rotates in a clockwise direction in the Northern Hemisphere and a counterclockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere. The term is a naming convention denoting the anomaly from normal rotation which is cyclonic in upwards of 98 percent of tornadoes. Many anticyclonic tornadoes are smaller and weaker than cyclonic tornadoes, forming from a different process, as either companion/satellite tornadoes or nonmesocyclonic tornadoes.
Michael Bettes is an American television meteorologist and storm chaser who works for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a co-host of AMHQ: America's Morning Headquarters. He hosts Weather Underground TV. Bettes has been an on-camera meteorologist for TWC since 2003, and is also an occasional fill-in weather anchor on The Today Show.
Storm Chasers is an American documentary reality television series that premiered on October 17, 2007, on the Discovery Channel. Produced by Original Media, the program follows several teams of storm chasers as they attempt to intercept tornadoes in Tornado Alley in the United States. The show was canceled at the end of its 5th season by Discovery Communications on January 21, 2012.
Twister...Ride It Out was an indoor special effects attraction based on the 1996 film Twister, located in the New York themed area at Universal Studios Florida. It replaced Ghostbusters Spooktacular and opened to the general public on May 4, 1998. Hosts Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, stars from the original film, were featured in recorded video footage and audio narrations throughout the attraction. Guests experienced a life-like encounter with a simulated tornado in the main show area which included water, fire, and the movement of objects across the stage among other audio and visual effects. Declining popularity due to a lack of long-term cultural significance led to the attraction's permanent closure on November 2, 2015. Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon opened in its place two years later in 2017.
Tony Laubach is an American storm chaser and meteorologist. He has participated in several field research projects and is one of the surviving members of TWISTEX. He has been contracted as a severe weather photojournalist for various major television networks, and has starred in several television shows, including Seasons 3 through 5 of Storm Chasers on the Discovery Channel.
Joseph Kosinski is an American film director, best known for his computer graphics and computer-generated imagery (CGI) work, and for his work in action films. He has directed the films Tron: Legacy (2010), Oblivion (2013), Only the Brave (2017), Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and Spiderhead (2022). His previous work has primarily been with CGI-related television commercials including the "Starry Night" commercial for Halo 3 and the award-winning "Mad World" commercial for Gears of War.
Reed Timmer is an American meteorologist and storm chaser. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he took an interest in science, including weather, at a young age, before experiencing severe weather, including a hailstorm at age 13. After presenting weather forecasts at his high school, he began studying meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, completing his PhD in 2015.
Glen Thomas Powell Jr. is an American actor. He began his career with small roles on television and in films such as Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003) and Fast Food Nation (2006). Powell had roles in the comedy-horror series Scream Queens (2015–2016), the teen comedy Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), and the romantic comedy Set It Up (2018). He also portrayed astronaut John Glenn in Hidden Figures (2016) and aviator Tom Hudner in Devotion (2022).
Sean Cameron Casey is an American IMAX filmmaker and storm chaser who appeared in the Discovery Channel reality television series Storm Chasers. Casey created an IMAX film called Tornado Alley about chasing tornadoes and had to build the Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV) and the Tornado Intercept Vehicle 2 (TIV2) to film inside a tornado. Tornado Alley was released worldwide on March 18, 2011. Casey has been named one of the 50 best minds of 2008 by Discover Magazine.
Lee Isaac Chung is an American filmmaker. His debut feature Munyurangabo (2007) was an official selection at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and the first narrative feature film in the Kinyarwanda language.
A prolonged and widespread tornado outbreak affected a large portion of the United States in late-May 2013 and early-June 2013. The outbreak was the result of a slow-moving but powerful storm system that produced several strong tornadoes across the Great Plains states, especially in Kansas and Oklahoma. Other strong tornadoes caused severe damage in Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan. The outbreak extended as far east as Upstate New York. 27 fatalities were reported in total, with nine resulting from tornadoes.
Timothy Michael Samaras was an American engineer and storm chaser best known for his field research on tornadoes and time on the Discovery Channel show Storm Chasers. He died in the 2013 El Reno tornado.
The 2013 El Reno tornado was an extremely large, powerful, and erratic tornado that occurred over rural areas of Central Oklahoma during the early evening of Friday, May 31, 2013. This rain-wrapped, multiple-vortex tornado was the widest tornado ever recorded and was part of a larger weather system that produced dozens of tornadoes over the preceding days. The tornado initially touched down at 6:03 p.m. Central Daylight Time (2303 UTC) about 8.3 miles (13.4 km) west-southwest of El Reno, rapidly growing in size and becoming more violent as it tracked through central portions of Canadian County. Remaining over mostly open terrain, the tornado did not impact many structures; however, measurements from mobile weather radars revealed extreme winds in excess of 313 mph (504 km/h) within the vortex. These are among the highest observed wind speeds on Earth, just slightly lower than the wind speeds of the 1999 Bridge Creek–Moore tornado. As it crossed U.S. 81, it had grown to a record-breaking width of 2.6 miles (4.2 km), beating the previous width record set in 2004. Turning northeastward, the tornado soon weakened. Upon crossing Interstate 40, the tornado dissipated around 6:43 p.m. CDT (2343 UTC), after tracking for 16.2 miles (26.1 km), it avoided affecting the more densely populated areas near and within the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.
Into the Storm is a 2014 American found footage disaster film directed by Steven Quale, written by John Swetnam, and starring Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh, Alycia Debnam-Carey, and Arlen Escarpeta. It is a meteorological disaster film about a rash of tornadoes striking the fictional town of Silverton, Oklahoma.
Minari is a 2020 American drama film written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung. It stars Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, and Will Patton. A semi-autobiographical take on Chung's upbringing, its plot follows a family of South Korean immigrants who move to rural Arkansas during the 1980s.
Twisters: The Album is the soundtrack to the 2024 film Twisters directed by Lee Isaac Chung, a standalone sequel to Twister (1996). It was released through Atlantic Records on July 19, 2024, the same day as the North American theatrical release and featured 29 songs from country music artists. The album is produced by Kevin Weaver, Brandon Davis, Ian Cripps and Joseph Khoury.
Twisters (Original Motion Picture Score) is the score album to the 2024 film Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung from the story and screenplay by Joseph Kosinski and Mark L. Smith, respectively; a standalone sequel to Twister (1996), the film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos amongst others. The film score is composed by Benjamin Wallfisch and released through Back Lot Music on August 2, 2024.