The summer box office has been on fire lately, and Twisters is the next movie on the 2024 release schedule expected to break records. A not-quite sequel to the 1996 disaster movie, the flick will follow a new group of storm chasers, including a social-media superstar chaser played by the increasingly popular Glen Powell. Like the original, it was filmed on location in Oklahoma, which helped make the production more realistic but also led to some real-life encounters with dangerous storms.
During a conversation with EW, the talented cast and director behind the soon-to-be blockbuster hit spoke at length about what it was like getting to film on location in Oklahoma during tornado season. While it wasn’t exactly friendly to the budget, it made all the difference in helping the cast get into character, especially when there were times when they had to take cover from real tornados happening miles away from the set.
Anthony Ramos recalls having to return to his trailer frequently during filming because they got word that a tornado had touched down nearby. Being that close is scary enough, but the Twisters cast had an even closer call when a twister actually touched down on location, destroying one of their sets. Powell painted the scene for EW, saying:
There was a [scene] where this farmers’ market is supposed to get blown down the street. And right before we were going to start shooting, getting blown down the street by jet engines, a real windstorm — it was 80 miles an hour, or something like that — just took the entire market. And so we were just chilling inside while they had to rebuild a farmers’ market so we could destroy it again.
As dangerous as it sounds, it would have been iconic to have actual tornado footage in Twisters. Assuming their safety could be ensured, the cast seems like they would have been on board with something like that if only to avoid having giant jet engines blowing wind into their face to simulate the storms while filming. After all, the director did commit to using as little CGI as possible, much to the shock of Powell and Ramos, and nothing says practical effects more than an actual storm.
Thankfully, no one was hurt during the dangerous storm, and production was able to resume after the set was rebuilt. However, that wasn’t the end of extreme weather. In the same interview, Daisy Edgar-Jones reminisced about how the intense heat made the rainstorm scenes hard to film because the water being sprayed on them would dry up almost instantly.
While fans will have to wait until July 17th to see if all their hard work paid off, critics are already calling it a major hit for Powell and the rest of the cast. Twisters definitely has huge shoes to fill, considering the original, which you can (and should) stream on Max with an active subscription, became the second-highest-grossing film of 1996. With the Top Gun: Maverick star involved, the odds of its success are incredibly high.