A storm has arrived at the box office, with Twisters bringing in $10.7 million in Thursday night previews as it heads to a domestic debut as high as $72 million.
That’s far above expectations. Going into the weekend, tracking services projected Twisters could score anywhere from $40 million to $50 million domestically (with some distributors believing it would go higher). If projections hold, it will become the top opening domestically for a natural disaster film, not adjusted for inflation. (The current crown holder is Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, which bowed to $68.44 million in 2004.)
Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos lead the ensemble cast of Twisters, which Minari filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung shot in Oklahoma, the heart of Tornado Alley. Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and Amblin Entertainment are behind the feature, with Universal handling domestic distribution and Warners International taking overseas.
Twisters arrives 28 years after Twister, the envelope-pushing feature that broke ground for marrying visual effects with practical effects. It starred the late Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, and hailed from filmmaker Jan de Bont. The original film was a box office juggernaut, opening to $41 million ($82 million in today’s dollars) and ending its run with $494.5 million globally ($992.08 million today).
Twisters will easily win the weekend. It enters the fray with box office holdovers Longlegs, the Neon horror feature that stunned with a $22.6 million bow last weekend, and Universal and Illumination’s Despicable Me 4, which launched over the July 4 holiday and has earned more than $235.6 million domestically to date.
The biggest Thursday preview of 2024 belongs to Pixar’s Inside Out 2, which brought in $13 million the night of June 14, on its way to a $154.2 million opening weekend.
