A sequel to ‘Twister’ is Back After 26 Years With ‘the Revenant’ Screenwriter; Everything You Need To Know

In the 26 years since Twister first hit theatres, the sequel is now in the works, and it’s being produced by Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment. The sequel will be written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, 2015) and produced by Frank Marshall (Jurassic World: Dominion).

The long-awaited sequel to the 1996 catastrophe film Twister finally has a release date and plot summary. According to a recent source, Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment are currently looking for a director for a sequel to the first film, also titled “Twisters,” with plans to revisit the story of Dr. William “The Extreme” Harding (Bill Paxton), the film’s protagonist.

The daughter of Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt’s characters, who “has acquired the storm-chasing itch her parents had,” will be the focus of Twisters, as reported by Deadline. Although Bill Paxton passed away in 2017, his daughter’s desire to continue in the family business seems like the appropriate way to memorialize him in the upcoming Twister sequel.

Helen Hunt, who played the quirky meteorologist and storm-chaser Dr. Joanne Harding in the original film, reportedly is a target for a return in the sequel, Twisters. There has been no word yet on whether or not Hunt has any interest in coming back.

The 1996 film Twister opens as the most powerful storm in decades is about to make landfall. Dr. Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) is a professor at the university, and she and a group of her students work with little money to create a prototype of Dorothy, a groundbreaking tornado data-gathering gadget conceived by her divorced husband, Bill (Bill Paxton). Bill rejoins the crew for one final mission after hearing from Harding that Dorothy is ready for testing and that their privately funded adversary Dr. Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes) has stolen the idea and constructed his own.

Jan de Bont’s Twister, starring Helen Hunt, Cary Elwes, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Todd Field, and Jeremy Davies, and written by Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin, opened to good reviews and became the year’s second highest-grossing film with a global total of $495 million. It’s easy to see why production companies are so eager to start filming a sequel.

Finding a Director for “Twisters”

Now that the story’s broad strokes have been drawn, the sequel to Twisters needs to find the appropriate director so that it can be filmed and released. Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski was rumored to have been attached at first, but he is currently working on bringing a Formula One project starring Brad Pitt and Apple to theatres.

Directors such as Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi (who won an Oscar for their work on Free Solo) and Dan Trachtenberg (who revived the Predator franchise with the critically acclaimed Prey) are among those being courted for Twisters, as is Travis Knight (who directed Kubo and the Two Strings and the prequel to Transformers, Bumblebee). There are probably more people involved whose identities have not been made public.

Mark L. Smith, an author of The Revenant, has penned Twisters, and the famed filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who served as an executive producer on the original film, apparently gave the script his enthusiastic approval.

Since the original Twister is so warmly remembered, it’s no surprise that Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Pictures are so keen to remake it.