twistersthe sequel to 1996 twisterseems to be moving forward. Deadline reports that the project, which comes from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, has set a production start date for the film in the spring of 2023, but it’s subject to a director finding. It was previously reported that Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) was on board to direct the film, written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), although the director has since left the project to focus on his upcoming Formula 1 racing film starring Brad Pitt.
This means that twisters now has no director and studio execs would meet with different directors about the project. Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi (Free solo) are listed as names of directors eligible for the project, including Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) and Travis Knight (Missing link). However, if Trachtenberg is really taken into consideration, the producers may want to call him because he doesn’t seem to know anything about it.
“To whom it may concern. I’m not TWISTER,” Trachtenberg posted on Twitter after the report was published.
It also mentions in the report that there are other directors “in the mix”, but we shouldn’t count on original twister director Jan de Bont is also part of this. When it was announced that a sequel would be coming, de Bont noted in a Collider interview that the announcement came as a total surprise. The director also expressed concern that a reboot would be bigger by portraying a powerful F5 tornado with many more special effects.
“I read that a month or two ago,” said de Bont. “I said, ‘Wow. Are they going to do the F5 now? I bet it’s that.’ You can’t do it by making it bigger. That if a movie almost never works. You have to come as one… with people who are actually involved in it. You can’t just… It’s like I’m working on the destruction scene We get worse and whole cities get destroyed, that’s exactly like falling into the trap of the special effects taking over completely.”
Will Helen Hunt return in Twisters?
Meanwhile, the new report also suggests that original star Helen Hunt would like to reprise her role in the sequel. In the first twisterHunt starred alongside Bill Paxton as a pair of storm chasers who got caught up in a severe tornado outbreak in Oklahoma. Paxton died in 2017 at the age of 61. Although Hunt is wanted by the filmmakers, it’s not clear if she has been formally offered an offer at this point.
twisters does not have a premiere date yet.