AP – Growing up in the Midwest, filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung developed both a healthy fear of tornadoes and a reverence for Jan de Bont’s 1996 disaster film Twister. He saw the movie in the theatre with his family when he was a teenager.
“I remember thinking, ‘I didn’t know you could chase after these things,’” Chung said.
“That, to me, was very mind-blowing.”
These were forces of nature he and his schoolmates in rural Arkansas, near the Oklahoma border, were being taught how to safely hide from. And here’s Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Alan Ruck driving towards them. Intentionally.
When he was hired to direct Twisters, storming theatres on July 19, he knew one thing was non-negotiable: They needed to shoot in Oklahoma, not on soundstages.
“I told everyone this is something that we have to do. We can’t just have blue screens,” Chung said. “We’ve got to be out there on the roads with our pickup trucks and in the green environments where this story actually takes place.”
There would be sacrifices that would have to be made, cutting the number of shooting days to make the budget work, but it was important. Twister might have been a major blockbuster, the second-highest grossing film of 1996 behind Independence Day, but for Chung it always seemed like a local film done in his backyard. He’d also filmed Minari there, his autobiographical family film that got six Oscar nominations, including best picture and director.
While most might remember Minari as a quiet, contemplative film, it was actually the one that got him thinking about doing something with more spectacle. At the end, there’s a dramatic fire.
“We actually lit this barn on fire and just took the risk of filming it in one take,” Chung said.
“I remember being so filled with adrenaline after that that I was like ‘I want to make a disaster film.’”
The first place he went to location scout for Twisters was a farmhouse. The owner came out and greeted Chung with a hug and the tidbit that he was actually an extra in Minari. “I felt like I was coming back home. It was a confirmation that we made the right call,” Chung said. “Minari and Twisters, even though they’re very different, I kind of think of them as my Oklahoma movies.
There had been talk of a Twister follow-up for a few years, with Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment working with The Revenant screenwriter Mark L Smith to develop a new story and figure out the best director for the job. Separately, Hunt was even reportedly at work on a next chapter, and there were several directors under consideration.
But Chung proved his passion to Steven Spielberg, Universal and Warner Bros, which is overseeing international distribution. “It’s like I could see it,” he said. “I was firing off in my mind all the emotions that I want the audience to feel.”
The movie, considered a standalone and not a direct sequel to the 1996 film, stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos and Glen Powell as a new bunch of storm chasers. None of the characters from the original are returning, but the legacy of their work is there – the Dorothy sensors are back and so are references to the fictional Muskogee State University. – Lindsey Bahr
