Box Office: ‘Twisters’ Whipping Up Huge Storm With Record $74.6M Domestic Opening

The film would mark the biggest start ever for a natural disaster pic, and is the latest summer event movie to exceed forecasts.

‘Twisters,’ directed by Lee Isaac Chung.

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures/Amblin Entertainment

Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters is whipping up huge winds at the box office, with forecasters predicting a far better-than-expected domestic opening of $74.6 million.

If projections hold, it will become the top opening domestically for a natural disaster film, not adjusted for inflation. (The current crown holder is Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, which bowed to $68.44 million in 2004.)

The turnout for Twisters cements the rising star status of Hollywood’s man-of-the-moment Glen Powell, along with Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos (the trio lead the ensemble cast). It’s also a notable win for Chung, the acclaimed filmmaker of indie hit Minari. The film’s demos are impressive: It is playing evenly among females and males, as well as appealing to both younger and older adults in what could lead to a new franchise. The film’s critics score on Rotten Tomatoes is a decent 77 percent, but its audience score is much higher at 92 percent, in line with an A- from Cinemascore.

Twisters arrives 28 years after Twister, the envelope-pushing feature that broke ground for marrying visual effects with practical effects. It starred the late Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, and hailed from filmmaker Jan de Bont. The original film was a box office juggernaut, opening to $41 million ($82 million in today’s dollars) and ending its run with $494.5 million globally ($992.08 million today).

Chung shot Twisters in Oklahoma, the heart of Tornado Alley. And, not surprisingly, the movie is doing its biggest business in areas impacted by the dangerous weather phenomenon (Friday’s top theater was in Oklahoma). Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and Amblin Entertainment are behind the feature, with Universal handling domestic distribution and Warners International taking overseas.

Heading into the weekend, tracking services had Twisters starting off with $40 million to $50 million domestically (with some distributors believing it would go higher, but no one predicted $70 million-plus). The film is also opening overseas, and cost a net $155 million to produce before marketing.

Twisters will easily win the weekend and is good news, considering the tough comparisons over the same weekend last year when Barbie and Oppenheimer opened, setting off the Barbenheimer effect. There was no chance that this weekend was ever going to match last year, but it could have been far worse had Twisters not overperformed.

Elsewhere, Universal and Illumination’s Despicable Me 4 is holding at second place with a projected weekend gross of $23.8 million for a domestic total of $260 million.

Pixar and Disney’s Inside Out 2 remains a powerhouse and will take third with an estimated $12 million to $13 million as it prepares to jump the $600 million mark domestically on its way to becoming the top-grossing animated film of all time globally in the coming days after surpassing Frozen II’s $1.451 billion in ticket sales.

Neon’s breakout horror hit Longlegs continues to win over moviegoers in its second weekend, and looks to fall a scant 45 percent or less to $11 million to $12 million for a 10-day domestic total of $44.6 million against a $16 million budget.

Apple Original Films’ Fly Me to the Moon can’t boast the same in its second weekend. The romantic-comedy adventure looks to tumble a steep 68 percent to $3.2 million for a 10-day domestic total of $16.3 million.

Fly Me to the Moon is falling to sixth place as Paramount’s hit prequel A Quiet Place: Day One is projected to round out the top five with $5.7 million for a domestic total north of $127 million.