Moviegoers ran towards the tornadoes this weekend and drove “Twisters” to a blockbuster opening. The standalone sequel to the 1996 hit grossed $80.5 million in ticket sales from 4,151 North American theaters, in line with studio estimates Sunday.

That's about $30 million greater than analysts originally expected and is the most important opening for a live-action film up to now. this summer.

“We had big ambitions from the beginning, and they've definitely exceeded them,” said Jim Orr, who heads distribution at Universal. “We're really overdoing it between the coasts, which is fun.”

His overperformance was paying homage to “Oppenheimer's” debuted the identical weekend last yr. There are some similarities: the studio, Universal, and the numbers. But there are also necessary differences: “Oppenheimer” was 3 hours long, R-rated (“Twisters” is PG-13), and historic, not to say the collective excitement surrounding the discharge date of its counterpart, “Barbie.”

“Twistersis now a franchise. While it is not a direct sequel to Twister, it benefits from brand recognition. The original film, directed by Jan de Bont and starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, was a financial success at the time and has grown in popularity over the years. This film, directed by Lee Isaac Chung, features none of the characters from the original and introduces a new group of storm chasers.

“This is further proof that while you create something that’s engaging and interesting and has broad appeal, people everywhere in the country will come,” said Michael O'Leary, president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners. “I feel the word of mouth for this film goes to be extraordinary.”

Universal, Warner Bros. and Amblin cost $155 million to produce, with millions more spent on advertising. The campaign included a country-heavy soundtrack featuring Luke Combs' new single “Aint No Love in Oklahoma,” which was streamed over 56 million times. The entire soundtrack, featuring artists such as Bailey Zimmerman, Tucker Wetmore, Tanner Adell, Lainey Wilson, Tyler Childers, Thomas Rhett and Miranda Lambert, was streamed over 75 million times.

Critics gave the two-hour thriller mixed but mostly positive reviews. Audiences enthusiastically gave it an A- CinemaScore and 4.5 stars on PostTrak. Also notable: 24% of moviegoers surveyed by PostTrack said actor Glen Powell was one of the main attractions.

“Our director has created exactly what audiences wish to see within the cinema: a really haunting, suspenseful story stuffed with chaos and a captivating solid,” said Orr.

Bob Bagby, president of the theater owners association and CEO of Kansas City-based B&B Theater, which has about 580 screens, said the 4DX theaters were nearly sold out all weekend. 4DX is an “immersive” presentation format for films that includes seat shaking and wind effects.

Twisters has also sparked heated discussion and debate online, some over the film's lack of explicit reference to climate change and others over the absence of a kiss between Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones. A video showing the kiss, left on the cutting room floor, made the rounds on social media over the weekend.

Bagby appreciated that there was no “surprising political or social agenda.”

“I'm within the film business. We show every thing. There are a number of movies about global warming and that's necessary,” he said. “But sometimes you go to the films and also you don't wish to be brought back to reality and lose your escape. You just wish to have an excellent time.”

Universal also had the second-best-selling film in the country with Despicable Me 4, now in its third weekend. In North America, where it is still playing in more than 4,000 theaters, it added $23.8 million, bringing its domestic total to $259.5 million.

Third place went to another animation giant, Disney and Pixar's Inside Out 2, which is now in its sixth weekend and has grossed $1.4 billion worldwide, quickly catching up to Frozen 2 for the title of highest-grossing animated film of all time.

Last year, Barbenheimer helped push the box office past $311 million this weekend. This weekend was never going to match that, but progress is still being made after a rocky start to the crucial summer movie season.

“Things have really turned around since May,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.

And another force is storming the cinemas next weekend in “Deadpool and Wolverine,” which is predicted to gross within the $160 million range. That could be enough to displace “Inside Out 2” as the best opening of the yr. How that may affect “Twisters” in its second weekend is an enormous unknown. O'Leary said he believes it's a plus to have exciting movies competing directly with one another.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday in U.S. and Canadian theaters, in line with Comscore. Final domestic numbers will probably be released Monday.

1. “Twisters,” $80.5 million.

2. “Despicable Me 4,” $23.8 million.

3. Inside Out 2, $12.8 million.

4. “Longlegs,” $11.7 million.

5. “A Quiet Place: Day One,” $6.1 million.

6. “Fly Me to the Moon,” $3.4 million.

7. “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” $2.7 million.

8. “Bad Newz,” $1.1 million.

9. “MaXXXine”, $819,242.

10. “The Bikeriders,” $700,000.

Originally published: July 21, 2024 at 3:03 p.m.

My name is Lee Isaac Chung and I'm the director of Twisters. This is a scene that takes place about halfway through the film. Internally, we might all the time say that is T4, tornado number 4, because we number each of our tornadoes. And Kate is played by Daisy Edgar-Jones. And then now we have Tyler, played by Glen Powell. Other interesting actors on this sequence are James Paxton, who is definitely Bill Paxton's son. You only see him very briefly. He's the person within the couple attempting to drive away from this tornado. No! Stop! And Lily Smith, the daughter of our author Mark L. Smith. And then now we have Samantha Ireland, Aila Grey, the little girl. And we also had Jeff Swearingen, who plays the unlucky receptionist. I actually desired to film a nighttime tornado because I grew up near Tornado Alley and the nighttime tornadoes were all the time the scariest. The intention behind it was to create that feeling, that subjective feeling of what it's wish to experience a tornado in real time. We had Scott Fisher, our computer graphics guy, who did a whole lot of interesting things in that scene after we saw the Coke machine fall over and I saw the highest shell come off. We arranged the highest shell to fly into the wind. Jeff Swearingen was able to be pulled into the air. And after he got pulled back, we switched Jeff out for this excellent stuntman who we arranged to truly get pulled into the air. I believe he flew about 65 feet. And then we slammed that trailer into the sting of the pool. That caused a whole lot of debris to fall down. And that was slightly scary to film because when the trailer falls on these actors, it's loud, very loud. And I assumed the actors were really great sports doing that. We obviously got them to safety because we were shooting a sequence where the background is unbroken and later after they come out of this swimming pool, it's all destroyed, we needed to destroy the set. So each time we were filming on this swimming pool, there have been people outside, our crew, destroying the set. So this was happening at the identical time we were filming all of the stuff within the pool. The swimming pool had never actually been there. We had found this motel where there have been three separate buildings. And what we did was we built the hotel out in a horseshoe shape and built an office in order that later we could destroy those parts of our set to make it appear to be a tornado had really swept through a horseshoe motel. When we went out with those guys with the crane, it was really a gorgeous shot. I give a whole lot of credit to Geoff Haley, our incredible cinematographer, for all of his technical expertise that he dropped at this whole sequence to ensure that our camera was straight and that every one of those moments by some means worked so seamlessly.