Twisters, the Glen Powell-Daisy Edgar Jones sequel to the 1996 action movie is looking at a $50M start, per tracking, when it opens July 19. Lower end of pic’s forecast is at $45M.
Like everything in the current marketplace, walk-up business and a heat wave are driving all forecasts higher than where tracking has been spotting figures, but this movie always was figured by distribution sources as one of summer’s wins. The question is, with all the tornado warnings going on this summer, will people want to watch havoc wreaked on the screen? Well, it didn’t stop them back in 1996, when the first movie, released by Warner Bros and directed by Jan de Bont opened to $41M and went on to make $241.7M domestic.
Warner Bros. has international this time around on Twisters.
Per tracking service Quorum, men under 35 are the leading demo who want to watch Twisters in a theater, followed by women over 35. The lowest of the quadrants is younger women, but tracking says the movie is three-quadrant strong.
Twisters is directed by Lee Isaac Chung and written by Mark L. Smith. The original movie was penned by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin and produced by Crichton, Kathleen Kennedy and Ian Bryce.
Twisters was one of the top four trailers to make impact 24 hours coming out of the Super Bowl in February, with a social media viewership north of 29M, per RelishMix. That indicator means a tremendous amount in terms of audiences’ long-term want-to-see. Other top trailers out of NFL title game, per RelishMix, were Deadpool & Wolverine (75.4M viewers), Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (43.2M) and Wicked (40.1M).
Universal has another summer grand slam in Illumination’s Despicable Me 4, which should fly past $100M+ over five days during the Independence Day holiday. That fourthquel opens Wednesday, July 3, sans any Tuesday night previews.