The 1996 weather-based action flick Twister is getting a reboot. News broke that Universal Pictures is going to breathe new life into the property and has already found a director to do so.
According to Variety, Joseph Kosinski is currently in negotiations to helm the Twister reboot. Kosinski also directed Top Gun: Maverick, an upcoming sequel to the 1986 blockbuster. He’s also helmed Tron: Legacy as well as Oblivion, which helped him land the Top Gun sequel thanks to his working relationship with Tom Cruise. Frank Marshall is slated to produce while the studio is currently meeting with potential writers.
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1996’s Twister starred Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt as a pair of scrappy, renegade storm chasers who were on the brink of divorce. They chase tornadoes across the Midwest in hopes that they can place their advance weather alert system in the path of a tornado while trying to stay ahead of their nemesis, a money-hungry scientist played by Carey Elwes. The film raked in $494 million in theaters around the globe and earned praise for its ground-breaking special effects. Jan De Bont, best known for Speed, directed the movie. Steven Spielberg served as executive producer with a script from Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton.
Earlier in June, Twitter users were debating the potential merits of a straight sequel to Twister. It was largely voted down, considering that Paxton had passed away in 2017. Others cited some of the film’s now-iconic lines that, not to mention the now-infamous cow scene. Despite the reverence for the film, it never quite sat well with critics, sporting only a 57 percent score on RottenTomatoes, deeming it “rotten.” Interestingly, it didn’t fare well with the nearly 900,000 audience members, who’ve tallied it at 58 percent.
In the wake of Paxton’s death, hundreds of real-life storm chasers took time to pay their respects to the actor, who’s credited with putting their vocation on the map with Twister. To celebrate Paxton, a group of storm chasers decided to do what they could to honor his memory. Using Facebook groups to coordinate their efforts, hundreds gathered in the Midwest; the group used GPS pings to help make their tribute a reality. When their efforts were viewed from above, their group pings spell out “BP” in honor of Paxton.
