Posted in: Movies, Universal, Warner Bros | Tagged: Glen Powell, lee isaac chung, Twisters

Twisters Star And Director Drew From Their Own Tornado Experiences

Twisters star Glen Powell and director Lee Isaac Chung drew inspiration from their previous experiences with tornados.

Tornados are one of those natural disasters that people are distinctly drawn to because they are ones that we can see. Unlike a hurricane, which, while devastating, is not directly in your line of sight, you can see a tornado as it moves, forms, and even destroys. There is a reason people have been watching storm-chasing videos for as long as they can, and that draw was one of the things that got so many people to see the original Twister in 1996. While that film might have some issues scientifically, even more so at the end, the storms looked incredible at the time and now look incredible. People didn't stop making tornado movies after Twister, but this summer, we're getting a sequel[ish] to that film with a whole new cast of characters and bigger storms. Tornados are something you must see to believe, and star Glen Powell, as he revealed to Total Film, actually had some personal experience he could draw from while they were shooting Twisters. 

"It's actually something I got to incorporate a little bit into the movie," he explained. "I had an experience with this tornado in Jarrell, Texas. It was an F5 – one of the big ones. It decimated Jarrell. I was outrunning it with my aunt Taffy and a car full of cousins. And I remember us having to take shelter. It didn't get close enough to do any damage to us, but I remember the fear of being on the road when, you know, the biggest imaginable one was kind of coming through."

Powell wasn't the only one drawing from personal experience. Twisters director Lee Isaac Chung explained, "At school, that was always the drill that we had to practice: the tornado drill." He went on to tell the story of "one of his earliest memories is as a four-year-old, three weeks into living on the Arkansas farm in a trailer home when his parents called out 'There's a tornado coming.'" As you can imagine, a trailer home is about the last possible place you want to be during a tornado. In tornado alley, many homes don't come with basements, and storm shelters can be incredibly expensive luxuries that people can't always afford. Chung and his family were among those people in the worst type of situation with nowhere to go, "We didn't have any storm shelter. So we were immediately looking for a place where we could hide it out." That is certainly something to have as one of your earliest memories.

Twisters: Summary, Cast List, Release Date

This summer, the epic studio disaster movie returns with an adrenaline-pumping, seat-gripping, big-screen thrill ride that puts you in direct contact with one of nature's most wondrous—and destructive—forces.

From the producers of the Jurassic, Bourne, and Indiana Jones series comes Twisters, a current-day chapter of the 1996 blockbuster Twister. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the Oscar® nominated writer-director of Minari, Twisters stars Golden Globe nominee Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing, Normal People) and Glen Powell (Anyone But You, Top Gun: Maverick) as opposing forces who come together to try to predict, and possibly tame, the immense power of tornadoes.

Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years who now studies storm patterns on screens safely in New York City. She is lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi (Golden Globe nominee Anthony Ramos, In the Heights), to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. There, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Powell), the charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better. As storm season intensifies, terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed, and Kate, Tyler, and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.

Twisters features an exciting new cast, including Nope's Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane (American Honey), Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders), Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Nik Dodani (Atypical) and Golden Globe winner Maura Tierney (Beautiful Boy). From Amblin Entertainment, Twisters is directed by Lee Isaac Chung and is produced by Oscar® nominee Frank Marshall (Jurassic and Indiana Jones franchises) and by Patrick Crowley (Jurassic and Bourne franchises). The screenplay is by Mark L. Smith, writer of the Best Picture nominee The Revenant. Twisters will be distributed by Universal Pictures domestically and by Warner Bros. Pictures internationally on July 19, 2024.

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