Twisters, the sequel to 1996's Twister, appears to be moving forward. Deadline reports that the project, which comes from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, has planned a Spring 2023 start date for the movie's production, but this is dependent on finding a director. It was previously reported that Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) was on board to helm the movie, written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), though the director has since left the project to focus on his upcoming Formula One racing movie with Brad Pitt.
This means that Twisters now has no director, and studio execs are said to be meeting with different directors about the project. Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi (Free Solo) are listed as names of directors considered for the project, which also includes Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) and Travis Knight (Missing Link). However, if Trachtenberg is truly under consideration, the producers may want to give him a call because he doesn't seem to know anything about it.
"To whom it may concern. I am not making a TWISTER," Trachtenberg posted to Twitter after the report was published.
It also notes in the report that there are other directors "in the mix," but we shouldn't count on original Twister director Jan de Bont to be among them, either. When it was announced that a sequel was happening, de Bont noted in a Collider interview that the announcement came as a total surprise. The director also expressed concern that a reboot going bigger by depicting a powerful F5 tornado with much more special effects used.
"I read that like a month or two ago," de Bont said. "I said, 'Wow. Are they going to do the F5 now? I bet you that's what it is.' You cannot do it by making it bigger. That as a movie hardly ever works. You have to come up as a... with people actually involved in it. You cannot just ... It's like I'll work on the destruction scene. We're going to get worse and whole cities are going to get destroyed. That's exactly like falling in the trap of having the special effects completely take over."
Will Helen Hunt Return in Twisters?
Meanwhile, the new report also suggests that original star Helen Hunt is wanted to appear in the sequel to reprise her role. In the first Twister, Hunt co-starred alongside Bill Paxton as a pair of storm chasers caught up in a severe tornado outbreak in Oklahoma. Paxton died in 2017 at the age of 61. While Hunt is wanted by the filmmakers, it's not yet clear if she's been formally given an offer at this point.
Twisters does not yet have a premiere date.