TWISTER Director Jan de Bont Talks About the Cost and Scale of the Film and Why It Could Never Be Recreated
Director Jan de Bont was the person behind the camera when the classic disaster thriller Twister hit theaters. The movie, about storm chasers who have developed a way to track tornadoes and give residents in the storm’s path a much quicker notice and chance of survival, was a visual spectacle that blew away audiences, and still holds up today.
27 years after it was released, and ahead of the sequel that’s in development, Twisters, which has no involvement from the original director or cast, de Bont talked to Inverse about why so much of the movie won't be able to be replicated in Hollywood today.
"When things fell from the sky, there were real things falling from a helicopter. If you film a car escaping a tornado in a hail storm, it was real ice that came at us. It's a movie that cannot be remade... That would never, ever happen again."
He went on to say that while there were a lot of difficult practical effects, Industrial Light & Magic took them to new heights with their VFX tornadoes. Getting the enormous funding for Twister apparently hinged on making the storms look real, which ILM was able to do.
"Every shot was a fortune. It would take three days to transfer all that information onto film. Right now it's fast, but in the beginning, it was super slow. And we had to be careful to get the shots done before the movie opened."
When asked about the sequel, de Bont said:
"It made so much money for the studio. Sooner or later they would do it."
He went on to say that he's looking forward to seeing what Chung does with the sequel, and noted that director Lee Isaac Chung has the opportunity to bring a totally different perspective to the concept, much like Greta Gerwig did for Barbie.
"It might be a totally different approach. That's the same with [Greta Gerwig] of Barbie. Nobody would ever have thought she'd direct that movie and make it so successful."
This could be the breath of fresh air the franchise needs to continue. I certainly hope it’s good!
Twisters is currently set to hit theaters on July 19, 2024.
via: ComicBook