Tornado Alley Pushed ‘Twisters’ to a Huge Box Office Launch | Analysis

Universal’s “Twisters” has gone from being a film that could tide the box office over until “Deadpool & Wolverine” arrives to a bona fide American success with its $80.5 million opening. That expectation-smashing result can be attributed to moviegoers who deal in real life with the blockbuster’s deadly natural foe: tornadoes.

Lee Isaac Chung’s standalone sequel to the 1996 disaster film “Twister” performed well across the country, but data from exhibition sources shows that major cities in the central United States are contributing a larger share of the film’s opening weekend gross than for the usual summer blockbuster.

Los Angeles has the highest market share as usual, but Dallas passed New York as the second highest grossing market for “Twisters,” with Houston in fourth. Oklahoma City and San Antonio also cracked the top 10, with the former having a market share for “Twisters” that is 229% higher than its national annual average.

The highest performing theater for “Twisters” also was not the AMC Burbank or the Empire 25 near Times Square, but the Regal Warren Moore in the suburbs south of Oklahoma City. Acquired by Regal in 2017, the 18-screen multiplex includes auditoriums for Imax and 4DX, the latter of which just saw “Twisters” break the format’s opening weekend record.

Moore, it should be noted, is also the site of two devastating EF5-level tornadoes in the last 25 years — a 38-mile-wide tornado hit the town in 1999 and killed 36 people, while a twister with 210 mph winds struck in 2013 and killed 24.

It has been 28 years since “Twister” became the second highest grossing film of summer 1996, driven by a renewed interest in disaster films fueled by the rise of CGI and other special effects that promised big screen spectacle that audiences had never seen before.

In 2024, “Twisters” may not have that cutting edge appeal, but Universal banked on the familiar name drawing in older audiences even if “Twister” star Helen Hunt wasn’t coming back for another round, while the appeal of a good old-fashioned disaster movie led by rising star Glen Powell, combined with generally positive reviews from critics, would bring in the younger crowd.

That bet paid off, as “Twisters” blasted by pre-release projections of a $50-55 million domestic opening weekend. But on top of those winning qualities, “Twisters” also has the appeal of familiarity for moviegoers in rural America — not the familiarity of IP but of the setting.

In all of Universal’s promotional material for the film, scenes from Chung’s on-location shooting in Oklahoma were prominently featured, and the film itself shows its protagonists doing their best to help out communities ravaged by tornadoes. Chung, who grew up in Arkansas, fought to shoot “Twisters” in Oklahoma instead of Atlanta and cut his budget to do so. While accompanied by the sort of big screen thrills that attract any audience, the sort of characters and locations seen in “Twisters” aren’t often seen in major studio productions, allowing it to stand out from its big-budget peers.

Eduardo Acuna, the recently appointed CEO of Regal’s parent company Cineworld, saw some similarities in how “Twisters” was marketed to the Roland Emmerich disaster film “2012,” which had posters of calamities striking various cities around the world that were sent to their corresponding markets. Theaters in Brazil, for example, saw posters of Rio de Janeiro consumed by the sea.

“We’ve seen in the past that when a film is set in a particular location, moviegoers from that location will turn out,” he said. “It adds to a level of relatability that increases interest.”

And while “Twisters,” like its predecessor, dramatizes tornadoes for the sake of spectacle, the way it conveys the impact of such forces of nature on Tornado Alley helps make it more relatable to the moviegoers that live there.

Mike Barstow, vice president of regional chain Main Street Theaters, told TheWrap a story that his father and chain founder Bill Barstow told him about when “Twister” hit theaters in 1996. Weeks before the film was set to hit theaters, tornados had ravaged many towns in Nebraska, where Main Street Theaters operated locations.

But rather than putting off moviegoers from seeing a disaster film about tornadoes because it hit too close to home, Barstow found lines going down the street on the opening weekend of “Twister.” Similarly, the chain is seeing strong ticket sales for “Twisters” at its 12-screen multiplex in Elkhorn just three months after an EF-3 tornado struck the area.

“We weren’t sure about the real-life component to it. Was this going to be too real or visceral for people who have dealt with tornadoes?” he said. “But I think there’s always something about seeing a relatable, familiar and above all entertaining film in an auditorium with people for whom it also resonates.”

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