Twisters director Lee Isaac Chung has revealed the film almost featured an homage to a classic film – until Steven Spielberg intervened, that is...
The disaster movie sequel hit cinemas last week, with Chung taking over directing duties and Spielberg returning as a producer on the follow-up, having done the same on the 1996 original.
Film fans who’ve already sat down to watch Twisters will know that it contains a “callback” to the first movie with a scene set at a cinema.
And while the original film’s cinema scene was set at a screening of The Shining, the sequel’s was showing Frankenstein, which the filmmaker said was due to the fact that Twisters “involves a birth of a monster, in a way”.
However, had he had his way, it would have been a very different choice for the film-within-a-film.
“It’s funny, I didn’t know what should be playing there for the longest time,” he told the Fade To Black podcast. “And I was actually hoping it could be Jaws. I was thinking, ‘it should be Jaws’.”
However, Spielberg – who directed the iconic shark movie – had other ideas.
Jaws was very nearly in Twisters but Spielberg said no! I *loved* this sequel and chatting to Lee Isaac Chung about making it was a 2024 highlight. Catch the full interview via @FadetoBlackPodhttps://t.co/yyJSIlZ6OKhttps://t.co/TyXDdOMjaypic.twitter.com/PxRoXB9BHO
— Hanna Ines Flint - Free ???????? (@HannaFlint) July 21, 2024
“I think Steven was being very humble,” Chung said. “And he was looking at different things as well, and we were trading different ideas around.”
He added: “I remember sending him that [Frankenstein] suggestion… and he said, ‘I love Frankenstein’. And so that kind of happened a couple of weeks before we actually started filming that scene.
“But it was that moment of having that touchpoint with him, that made me feel like it’d be the right choice.”
Twisters features Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, alongside a cast that also includes Anthony Ramos, David Corenswet, Sasha Lane and Kiernan Shipka.
The film is in cinemas now.
