Retired Dutch cinematographer turned filmmaker Jan de Bont says he knew Hollywood would get around to a remake or sequel to his iconic 1996 disaster film “Twister”.
de Bont directed five films in total, the first two becoming staples of the action genre with “Speed” and “Twister”. Whilst the first was a breakout hit, the latter was a major event movie at the time – boasting a stellar pedigree and some then cutting-edge digital visual effects.
It earned almost $500 million at the global box office and was the tenth highest-grossing film of all time upon its release. In a new interview with Inverse, de Bont says a follow-up was inevitable as: “It made so much money for the studio. Sooner or later they would do it.”
Last year came the announcement of “Twisters,” a sequel joint production between Universal and Warner Bros. Pictures. This time “Minari” helmer Lee Isaac Chung would direct from a script by writer Mark L. Smith.
Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin label produced the original, reportedly “flipped for the script,” which led to the entire project being fast-tracked with one of the most handsome casts you’ll ever see including Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Brandon Perea, David Corenswet, Kiernan Shipka, Sasha Lane, Anthony Ramos, Daryl McCormack and Maura Tierney among others.
79-year-old de Bont says he was never contacted to consult on the sequel but believes the new iteration will be largely different from his own vision as so much of the original was done practically:
“When things fell from the sky, there were real things falling from a helicopter. If you film a car escaping a tornado in a hail storm, it was real ice that came at us. It’s a movie that cannot be remade… That would never, ever happen again.”
Industrial Light & Magic handled the computer-generated tornadoes and debris of the original, and it was hard effort:
“Every shot was a fortune. It would take three days to transfer all that information onto film. Right now it’s fast, but in the beginning, it was super slow. And we had to be so careful to get the shots done before the movie opened.”
He hopes that Chung will offer a unique perspective with his take: “It might be a really different approach. That’s the same with [Greta Gerwig] of Barbie. Nobody would ever have thought she’d direct that movie and make it so successful.”
