The film was the second biggest hit of 1996 behind Independence Day
The production budget of Twister was reportedly somewhere between $88-92 million, which made it one of the most expensive movies made in the mid-90s.
Happily for studios Warner Bros and Universal (who collaborated on the film), this investment paid off: Twister was a huge hit, with worldwide earnings of $496.7 million, making it the second-biggest movie of 1996 behind Independence Day (which earned $817.4 million).
Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis all came close to directing it
Twister was produced by Amblin Entertainment, the company co-founded by Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall and future Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. Excited by the dramatic possibilities, Steven Spielberg contemplated directing the film himself.
When he decided against this, several more big-name directors were considered including James Cameron, John Badham and Robert Zemeckis, until Jan de Bont was hired on the strength of his directorial debut Speed.
Filming had to be scheduled around Helen Hunt’s work on Mad About You
When cameras rolled on Twister, Helen Hunt’s main claim to fame was sitcom Mad About You. In fact, Hunt’s commitment to the TV show almost stopped her making Twister, as the shooting schedules clashed.
Happily, Hunt’s Mad About You co-star Paul Reiser (also the show’s creator) agreed to delay shooting on the new season for two and a half weeks.
Bill Paxton’s role was originally earmarked for Tom Hanks
Early on, Twister’s male lead Bill Harding was poised to be played by Tom Hanks. Reportedly the Philadelphia and Forrest Gump Oscar-winner remained attached long enough to do script readings with the cast and choose his character’s costume.
However, Hanks eventually pulled out; 1996 would instead see him make his directorial debut with That Thing You Do!
Bill Paxton wears the exact same clothes Tom Hanks had picked out for the role of Bill Harding
When Tom Hanks dropped out, Bill Paxton was cast, based in part on the recommendation of his friend and frequent collaborator James Cameron (Paxton appeared in The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies and later Titanic).
The clothes Paxton wears in the movie are the very same ones Hanks had selected for his wardrobe.
Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were temporarily blinded by the lighting in one scene
As it centres on storm activity, some pretty heavy-duty lights were used on set to simulate the weather conditions presented in the film. This proved more hazardous than expected, when both Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were temporarily blinded by the glaring lights used.
The actors were prescribed eye drops, and special filters were placed on the lights to avoid any further injuries.
Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt had to get hepatitis shots after filming the muddy scene under the bridge
In another scene, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton get covered in thick mud under a bridge. As they were shooting on location with with practical rain and wind FX, much of the dirt was real, and some of the detritus whipped up by the wind got into the actors’ eyes.
Because of the risk of infection, both Hunt and Paxton were given hepatitis shots.
Bill Paxton wanted to direct a Twister sequel
Bill Paxton later moved into directing with 2001 horror Frailty, and he hoped to direct more films – including Twister 2. Paxton explained in 2012 that he wanted to make “the Jaws version of that movie. I always felt like we did the Pepsi Lite version.”
Unfortunately, Paxton was not able to drum up interest in making a Twister sequel before his untimely passing in 2017.
The prologue scene featuring young Jo was added at the last minute
Twister opens with a prologue scene showing Helen Hunt’s Jo as a child, losing her father in a tornado. This plot point was always part of the character’s backstory, there to help explain her fixation on the destructive weather phenomenon.
However, it had not always been the plan for this to be established from the film’s opening scenes.
Young Jo is played by future Spy Kids actress Alexa Vega
For the role of young Jo, the filmmakers cast seven-year-old child actress Alexa Vega. After several other small roles, Vega really broke through in 2001 as Carmen Cortez in Spy Kids, a role she would reprise in three sequels.
Now married and known as Alexa PenaVega, her more recent acting credits include Hallmark movie series the Picture Perfect Mysteries.
The entire camera crew quit after director Jan de Bont hit a camera operator
Director Jan de Bont was a hard taskmaster on Twister, putting intense pressure on the crew. Things reached a head when the director angrily struck a camera operator for missing a cue.
In protest, director of photography Don Burgess and the entire camera crew quit the movie, complaining the director was “out of control.”
De Bont had to take over when his next director of photography was injured
When the whole camera crew walked out, production on Twister was halted for a week until cinematographer Jack N. Green and his crew took over.
Unfortunately, Green also had a bad experience on the shoot: he was injured when a hydraulic set was accidentally turned on with him in it. Jan De Bont wound up doubling up as director of photography to finish the movie.
Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar left the band over the Twister theme song
Rock legends Van Halen were enlisted to record original music for the Twister soundtrack, including the film’s theme song, Humans Being. However, this track wound up being the last thing the band recorded with their second vocalist Sammy Hagar.
Tensions had been building in the band for sometime, until finally clashes between Hagar and his bandmates over the song’s lyrics resulted in the singer quitting.
CGI was used to erase a moment where Philip Seymour Hoffman’s privates were visible
Twister features a scene-stealing supporting turn from Philip Seymour Hoffman as the excitable and eccentric Dusty. In one scene, Dusty – wearing loose-fitting shorts – laughs and leans back, lifting a leg.
Subsequently, there was a brief moment in this scene when Hoffman’s private parts were clearly visible up the leg of his shorts. Because of this, Twister’s CGI team had to hastily augment this shot.
Real-life storm chasers paid tribute to Bill Paxton after his death
When Twister star Bill Paxton sadly passed away from a stroke in February 2017 aged just 61, among those who mourned his loss were members of the storm chaser community.
Around a week after Paxton’s death, a group of over 200 storm spotters paid tribute to the late actor by arranging themselves to spell out the actor’s initials using their GPS trackers.
Helen Hunt may have been concussed after hitting her head in a driving scene
As if temporary blindness and hepatitis shots weren’t enough, Helen Hunt suffered further injury shooting Twister. One risky sequence saw Hunt’s Jo open her car door whilst driving through a cornfield – and when Hunt momentarily lost her grip on the door, it hit her in the head.
Some close to the production have said that Hunt wound up with a concussion because of this accident.
Hunt didn’t take kindly to Jan De Bont suggesting the possible concussion was her own fault
When later quizzed about Helen Hunt’s on-set car accident, director Jan De Bont said, “I love Helen to death, but you know, she can be also a little bit clumsy.” Hunt wasn’t happy to hear this, responding, “Clumsy? The guy burned my retinas, but I’m clumsy.”
Hunt and De Bont have not worked together again since Twister.
It had one of the most expensive screenplays ever
Hoping for another Jurassic Park-sized hit, producer Steven Spielberg enlisted Michael Crichton (author of the original Jurassic Park novel) to write the Twister screenplay.
Crichton signed on to co-write the movie with his wife Anne-Marie Martin, for $2.5 million, which was one of the largest fees ever paid for a screenplay at the time.
At least three more writers worked on the script after Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin
Even after Crichton (who also co-produced the film) and Martin had done their work, more time and money went into the Twister script. Once cameras were already rolling, first Joss Whedon then Steve Zaillian were hired to do uncredited rewrites, both reportedly earning $100,000 a week.
Finally, during production Jeff Nathanson was brought on board for more last-minute script revisions.
The filmmakers were sued by two screenwriters who claimed they’d been plagiarised
After Twister was released, screenwriter Stephen Kessler sued, claiming he had written a screenplay called Catch the Wind years earlier which the filmmakers had ripped off.
Kessler ultimately lost the case – but later another writer, Daniel Perkins, also sued, claiming his script Tornado Chasers had been ripped off. This was settled out of court, with the details of the settlement kept confidential.
Jan de Bont dropped out of Godzilla to make Twister
Before signing on to make Twister, director Jan de Bont had been attached to a somewhat different large-scale disaster movie: the first Hollywood take on the iconic Japanese monster Godzilla, for studio TriStar.
This film would eventually be made by Independence Day director Roland Emmerich in 1998. Since then, Warner Bros and Legendary have rebooted the character as part of their ‘Monsterverse’ series.
It was the very first film released on DVD in the US
As a big-budget blockbuster boasting an epic visual spectacle, Twister was the ideal film to introduce a brand new home entertainment medium promising an enhanced viewing experience: DVD. Twister was the very first film made commercially available on DVD in the United States, back in March 1997.
Within a few years DVD, dethroned VHS as the dominant form of physical media for home entertainment worldwide.
It’s one of only five films that Jan de Bont has directed
When Twister proved an even bigger hit than Jan De Bont’s previous film Speed, it looked like he was set to join the ranks of Hollywood’s biggest blockbuster directors.
Unfortunately, De Bont’s next two films – Speed 2: Cruise Control and The Haunting – were critically lambasted flops, and his reputation suffered. After 2003’s Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, De Bont never directed again.
It was the basis for an attraction at Universal Studios, Florida
In May 1998, two years after the movie was released, Twister: Ride It Out opened at the Universal Studios resort in Orlando, Florida. The indoor special effects show, filled with references to the film, gave guests a safe simulation of what tornado conditions might feel like.
It ran for 19 years, until declining popularity saw it replaced with Race Through New York with Jimmy Fallon.
Daisy Edgar-Jones is set to appear in belated sequel Twisters
In 2020, director Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) was linked to a new Twister movie. This didn’t happen, but the project was eventually developed into a new film entitled Twisters, which it was reported in March 2023 will be directed by Lee Isaac Chung, with Daisy Edgar-Jones in talks to star.
It is currently unclear if the film will have narrative links to the original.
Production was temporarily suspended because of the Oklahoma City bombing
Twister was in production in Oklahoma on April 19th, 1995 - the day of the infamous Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history.
In the wake of this terrible news, the film shoot was temporarily put on hold, and many crew members went out to the bomb site to assist in recovery efforts.
The production bought a large part of the real town of Wakita in order to destroy it
Twister features some prominent scenes in the Oklahoma town of Wakita. This is a real place, and to shoot what they wanted there, the studio purchased eight blocks of the town (reportedly paying between $7,000-$10,000 per house) then demolished it.
This area was subsequently rebuilt and the town was allowed to keep the new fire truck purchased for the production.
Wakita now houses a Twister museum
As might be expected, the small town of Wakita has capitalized on its association with the 1996 blockbuster. Before the movie had even hit screens, Twister: The Movie Museum was opened in Wakita, and it remains one of the town's biggest tourist attractions to this day.
The location hosted a huge gathering of Twister fans for the film's 25 anniversary in 2021.
Camel noises were used in the film's sound effects
When a movie is as filled with state-of-the-art SFX as Twister, you might anticipate that everything was achieved in an extremely hi-tech fashion.
However, for some of the sound effects - namely, the noise of the pivotal tornadoes themselves - the Twister crew went in a direction you might not have expected. They took the sound of a camel groaning, then digitally slowed this down.
Tom Hanks recommended Paxton after working with him on Apollo 13
When you're replacing one of the most beloved leading men of your generation, it doesn't hurt to get his blessing.
When Tom Hanks decided to drop out of Twister, he immediately thought of Bill Paxton for the role of Bill Harding, as they'd not long since worked together on Apollo 13. Hanks' recommendation is a big part of why Paxton secured the role.
Paxton's southern roots helped him get the part
Tom Hanks later explained that part of the reason he decided against playing Bill Harding was because "it wasn't what I was trying to do with my career at that time...it called for an eccentric man with a southern flair, and that wasn't me."
The fact that Paxton was a born Texan with a strong accent made him a better fit.
Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell were among those considered for Paxton's role
Bill Paxton had never headlined a blockbuster when he was hired to replace Tom Hanks as Bill Harding.
It's not too surprising, then, that the filmmakers had a wish list of big names for the part: these included Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, John Travolta, Richard Gere, Dennis Quaid, Val Kilmer, Michael Keaton and John Cusack.
A Boeing 707 jet engine was used to create wind on set
When it comes to simulating weather, filmmakers can use electric lights to stand in for lightning, or artificial matter to stand in for debris - but certain things you just can't fake.
If you want to show wind power, you need real wind, and for some scenes which needed to show the wind blowing at its most ferocious, the filmmakers used a Boeing 707 engine.
It was the last film ever released on HD-DVD
As well as being the first film ever released on the enduring DVD format, Twister was also the last film released on a format you might have forgotten even existed.
In May 2008, it was released to HD-DVD, the short-lived high definition format which was a rival to Blu-ray (not unlike how VHS and Betamax were rivals in the 80s home video boom).
Bill Paxton and Steven Spielberg never met during production
Although Hollywood titan Steven Spielberg was a producer on Twister and Bill Paxton was the film's leading man, the two of them never crossed paths during production, as Spielberg chose to keep his distance from the set.
When they finally met a year and a half later, Paxton recalls Spielberg greeting him with the words, "Hey, thanks for making me a lot of money!"
The hailstones contained milk to show up better on camera
Amidst the many forms of weather phenomena we see in Twister, there is a scene which features a hail storm. This proved especially difficult to film, as they couldn't find a way to make the artificial hailstones visible.
Eventually they used ice that was partially made of milk, as this made the hail easier to see on camera.
An Ontario drive-in theater was hit by a tornado when Twister was set to play there
It is reported that on May 20th, 1996 (whilst Twister was on general release), the Can-View Drive-In on Thorhold, Ontario torn apart by a tornado. Legend has it that Twister was playing at the time, and had reached the scene in the movie when a drive-in theater is destroyed.
Investigation has proved this to be a myth, but Twister was due to screen that evening.
The drive-in theater in the movie is showing of the biggest hits of the film's respective studios
Twister was actually a co-production of two of Hollywood's biggest studios, Universal and Warner Bros.
For this reason, the drive-in theater we see in the movie is showing two enduringly popular hit films from both studios: Universal's 1960 release Psycho, and Warner Bros' 1980 release The Shining.
Several Oklahoma TV meteorologists appear in the film as themselves
Twister was shot on location in Oklahoma, the Southern US state where the story is set. Given the film’s subject matter it was only appropriate that it feature appearances from a number of real-life local TV weather reporters.
Oklahoma City meteorologists Gary England, Jeff Lazalier, Rick Mitchell and Andy Wallace all appear in the movie, playing themselves in TV and radio weather report scenes.
Two Twister soundtrack albums were released
The merchandising campaign for Twister saw not one but two soundtrack albums released on CD. Twister: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack featured the two original Van Halen tracks – Humans Being and Respect the Wind – plus tracks by artists including Tori Amos, k.d. lang, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Shania Twain.
There was also Twister: Motion Picture Score, featuring Mark Mancina’s orchestral score.
Theater owners complained the film kept destroying their sound systems
Given its subject matter, it should come as no great surprise that Twister is a rather noisy movie. Unfortunately, it was even louder than theater owners across the United States were prepared for.
The film quickly became notorious for wrecking surround sound speaker systems, due to its high volume and heavy use of bass.
Jan De Bont hated shooting the dinner scene, because he's a vegetarian
Considering how much of Twister is spent in moving vehicles under extreme weather conditions, one might have thought the dinner table scene at Aunt Meg's would have been a refreshingly easy shoot.
However, director Jan De Bont found this scene particularly hard, as he's a vegetarian and the cast are eating steak and eggs.
Twister's release date was moved to avoid a clash with the original Mission: Impossible
Twister had originally been set to hit North American theaters on May 17th, 1996 - but this was just one week before Paramount opened their own big summer movie, Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible.
Sportingly, Twister's release was moved forward to May 10th, to avoid a head-to-head box office battle. Mission: Impossible wound up a slightly smaller hit, grossing $457.7 million, whilst Twister made $495.7 million.
Cary Elwes' character wasn't always meant to be the bad guy
Cary Elwes (still best known for The Princess Bride) co-stars in Twister as Jonas, another storm chaser who has a bitter rivalry with Bill.
According to Elwes, his character wasn't originally written to be quite such a villain, and originally had a more substantial role in the film, but through script revisions and test audience reactions he was gradually reworked into a full-on antagonist.
Jami Gertz received a Razzie nomination for her performance
The Lost Boys actress Jami Gertz co-stars in Twister as Melissa, Bill's new bride-to-be. Apparently not everyone was won over by Gertz's turn as a southern therapist, as she was nominated for Worst Supporting Actress at that year's Golden Raspberry Awards (but 'lost' to Melanie Griffith in Mulholland Falls).
Twister is Gertz's last major studio film to date; she's acted mostly in television since.
Some swearing was censored to ensure a family-friendly rating
Twister was originally shot with a hint of marginally more mature content, including a few uses of the dreaded F-word. It was ultimately decided to censor these in order to keep the film open to a broader family audience.
The film wound up with a PG-13 rating in the US, and an even more relaxed PG in some territories including Great Britain.
It was the first and only film to 'win' Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million at the Razzies
The voters at the Golden Raspberry Awards clearly weren't impressed with the way blockbuster cinema was going in the mid-90s, as at their March 1997 ceremony they introduced a new category: Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million.
Twister won this, beating competition from Mission: Impossible, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Independence Day and A Time To Kill. However, the category was never used again.
The oil tanker explosion had to be shot twice, because the cameras weren't rolling the first time
When it came time to shoot the scene when the oil tanker explodes, the crew made a rather costly mistake: it was mistimed, and went off before director Jan De Bont called action.
Shooting it a second time reportedly cost the production an extra $500,000, something the director allegedly decided not to tell the studio straight away.
Laura Dern turned down the part of Jo
Before Helen Hunt was cast as Jo, the first choice for the role was another actress with experience of SFX-heavy blockbusters: Laura Dern. However, Dern decided against taking another large-scale film of this nature, and so opted out.
Had Dern taken the role, it would have been her second film based in the writing of Michael Crichton.
The producers vetoed the proposed tagline 'It Sucks'
As Twister deals with weather phenomena at its most destructive, it isn't too great a surprise that the film's marketing department toyed with using the tagline, 'It Sucks.'
It's even less surprising that the producers ruled this out, feeling that it would invite ridicule from critics and audiences.
Helen Hunt turned down Broken Arrow to make the movie
Before Helen Hunt signed on to play Twister's Jo, she had been in the running to appear in another 1996 action movie, Broken Arrow. Hunt had been in contention for the role of Park Ranger Terry Carmichael opposite Christian Slater and John Travolta.
When Hunt passed on that role, it was taken by Samantha Mathis instead.
The storm chasers quote cult movie Repo Man
One scene sees Todd Field's Beltzer declare over the CB radio, "A normal person spends his life avoiding tense situations," to which Philip Seymour Hoffman's Dusty replies, "a repo man spends his life getting into tense situations!"
This is a quote from Harry Dean Stanton's character Bud in the 1984 cult comedy Repo Man.
It was Jan De Bont's second time working with Alan Ruck
Twister was director Jan De Bont's second film after 1994 action smash Speed, and he brought back one key cast member: Alan Ruck, who appears in Twister as meteorologist Robert "Rabbit" Nurick, having previously appeared as tourist Doug Stephens in Speed.
Despite these roles and his run on TV sitcom Spin City, Ruck remains best known for his breakthrough role in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Helen Hunt unsuccessfully pitched a sequel with a racially diverse cast
Helen Hunt revealed in 2021 that, like Bill Paxton, she also pitched a sequel with herself at the helm, which she would write alongside Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal.
Hunt says the plan was for the film to feature all Black and brown storm chasers... [but] we could barely get a meeting, and this is in June of 2020 when it was all about diversity."
The whole movie takes place over the course of 24 hours
Observant viewers will note that - other than the prologue scene showing Jo as a child - Twister takes place entirely over the course of 24 hours.
This is structurally similar to director Jan De Bont's previous film Speed, which also starts with a prologue then shows the bulk of its narrative over the course of one long, eventful day.
A total of eight tornadoes appear in the movie
As the tornado sequences are the main selling point of Twister, these tend to be the scenes we remember most in the film.
In fact, we see a grand total of eight tornadoes across the film's 113 minute running time. On average, the state of Oklahoma is hit by 52 tornadoes a year (i.e. one a week), so that would be an unusually turbulent day.
Country music star Garth Brooks was considered for the lead
Garth Brooks is one of the biggest stars of country music, but he's not particularly established as a leading man actor. Nonetheless, Brooks was reportedly once courted as a possibility for the role of Bill Harding.
Brooks apparently decided against as he realized that the real star of the show would be the tornadoes, and not him.
Sega released an official Twister pinball machine
As part of the film's promotional merchandising, an official Twister pinball machine was produced by Sega, and made available in arcades in April 1996, a month before the film opened.
One of these machines wound up in the Twister Movie Museum of Wakita, having been donated by Bill Paxton himself.
Joss Whedon worked on the script on the day he got married
Before he made TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Marvel's first two Avengers movies, Joss Whedon was best known in Hollywood as a reliable script doctor. Whedon was so committed, he sent in his revised script the day of his wedding.
The writer recalled later, "I had to say, 'I hope you like this, because I am leaving the country now for a honeymoon.'"
The film got a green light before a single page of script had been written
Many critics have grumbled over the years that most big blockbuster movies are more concerned with special effects than story - and in some ways this is the literal truth.
Producer Kathleen Kennedy has admitted that Warner Bros gave Twister a green light based entirely on a test reel from SFX company Industrial Light and Magic, despite the fact that no script existed yet.