So much for those theories about moviegoers being hungry for original stories.
After a dismal start to the summer ticket-selling season — Memorial Day weekend attendance was the lowest in 43 years — Hollywood has bounced back by delivering nostalgia-heavy sequels. The latest is “Twisters,” a loose follow-up to “Twister,” the 1996 action-adventure about storm chasers in Oklahoma. “Twisters” was on pace to collect roughly $80 million in the United States and Canada over the weekend.
That total, easily enough for No. 1, turned heads in Hollywood. Box office analysts had predicted “Twisters” would take in about $50 million, citing prerelease surveys that track audience interest.
“Twisters” cost an estimated $155 million to make, not including tens of millions in marketing costs. It was released in North America by Universal Pictures, which booked it into 4,151 theaters. (To compare, the first movie cost $182 million in today’s dollars and arrived to $83 million, going on to collect nearly $1 billion worldwide.)
You should perhaps brace for “Twisters: Even More Twisters.” Based on strong turnout in North America over the weekend, it is almost guaranteed that Universal will explore another sequel.
“Twisters” probably took off at the box office for a variety of reasons, theater owners said. Reviews were largely positive. There haven’t been many natural disaster movies in the marketplace lately. It was smartly cast, pairing Glen Powell, a fast-rising broad audience star, with Daisy Edgar-Jones, a favorite among young women. The PG-13 film was directed by Lee Isaac Chung, who charmed art house crowds with “Minari” in 2020.
Starting in spring 2023, evidence began to emerge that Americans were tiring of sequels and remakes. The third “Ant-Man” movie disappointed at the box office, as did the fifth “Indiana Jones” installment, the seventh “Mission: Impossible” chapter and sixth “Exorcist” effort, to list just a few examples. At the same time, stories that were completely new to big screens — “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Sound of Freedom,” “M3gan,” “Five Nights at Freddy’s” — became surprise sensations.
But originality has not been filling seats in the past few months, at least not on the scale that movie theater companies need to stay afloat, and the big studios need to justify the rising costs of making movies. “The Fall Guy,” an original action comedy, cost at least $200 million to make and market and collected $179 million worldwide in May. “If,” an original animated movie, cost at least $150 million to make and market and has maxed out at about $186 million worldwide.
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