Hollywood is Making a Sequel to Oklahoma’s Original Twister

It's been over twenty-five years since the world experienced Oklahoma's wild springtime weather on the big screen with Twister, it's about time they got a little refresher.

Welcome back to the suck zone!

While there's plenty of conjecture online and a few fake trailers, the details aren't clear as mud.

While every outlet seems to be listing the sequel as Twister 2, there was a tornado-chasing film released straight-to-video right after the original movie dominated the 1996 box office. The sequel is to be called Twisters.

From IMDB:

Twenty years ago, scientists achieved the impossible. They collected a full data set from the inside of a monster F5 tornado. Through the application of this data, they were able to create Antheia, an advanced early warning system. With this information, thousands of lives have been saved and populations have grown comfortably under the watchful eye of their protector. However, whilst science has become complacent, mother nature has continued to evolve...

The cast is also a weird jumble of curiosity too. Google shows Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman attached to it, but since they're both dead, it's more than curious. I suppose flashbacks and archival footage aren't out of the question, but more than likely they're listed because they starred in the first. It's just how Google's algorithm works I suppose.

Will they film it in Oklahoma?

That is the million-dollar question. The original was based out of my hometown in North-Central Oklahoma and filmed all across the Cherokee Strip. Hollywood wanted it filmed in California, but the Sooner State authenticity made it the second-highest-grossing film of 1996, bested only by Independence Day.

Oklahoma's quickly on the rise in the film industry due to generous tax incentives from the state. Reservoir Dogs has been a huge success. Martin Scorsese and Leo Dicaprio's Killers of the Flower Moon is sure to be a box-office hit too. Oklahoma has become 'the' place to film in the 2020s.

All the same, the last three years of shrinking box-office dollars due entirely to Covid-19, Hollywood is back to making movies as cheaply as possible, making for some pretty awful flicks... You saw Me Time, right?

When does it release?

The tentative release date so far is a very generic summer of 2024, so we have a while to wait.

The original opened the second week of May and all hell broke loose at theaters across Tornado Alley. There were tons of places that had to stop the movie and send people toward shelter because real-life tornadoes were happening all around them. A crazy coincidence in the most fantastic sort of way.

Will it be as good as the original?

Meh... When was the last time a sequel outperformed the original? That being said, when the script was pitched to Steven Spielberg, he apparently reacted with enough enthusiasm that he fast-tracked the project with his production company.

Odds are, if you walk into the theater (or wait for the bootleg torrent) with an open mind, it'll probably be entertaining.