The filming for new extreme weather disaster movie Twisters kept getting shut down by bad weather

May. 17, 2024

Exclusive: Twisters director Lee Isaac Chung talks to Total Film about the perils of filming during tornado season in Oklahoma

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Extreme weather movie Twisters filmed during tornado season in Oklahoma, and it went exactly as you might expect

“I’ve got to say, actually filming this thing was so hard, because we went into Oklahoma during tornado season,” director Lee Isaac Chung tellsTotal Film in our new issueout on Thursday May 23, which also features Twisters on the cover.

“We kept getting shut down by weather. There were so many lightning delays. We got shut down by high winds multiple times. I kept on talking to myself in front of the crew – I would say, ‘Let’s film in Oklahoma. During tornado season, I said.’ So that was kind of a running joke between all of us, that this decision I had made – that we would try to make it as practical as possible – was screwing us over. But now when I look at the footage, I wouldn’t trade it.”

Twisters, a ‘new chapter’ after the iconic 1996 movie Twister, sees scientists Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Javi (Anthony Ramos) team up with rock ’n’ roll storm-chaser Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) when multiple deadly weather systems converge over Central Oklahoma.

Powell evenbrought his own real-life tornado experienceto the movie, but perhaps even he wasn’t prepared for the weather that followed him and the cast around…

Twisters is released on July 19. And you can read more about it and a whole lot else besides in the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Thursday, May 23.

Check out the covers below:

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I’m the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I’ve worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.

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