UPDATE: 2025-08-02 07:49 EST BY BRENNAN KLEIN
Twisters Opening Weekend Blasts Past $80.5 Million
This article was originally written Saturday AM and has been updated Sunday AM with altered box office projections (in bold), a full chart, and further analysis.
Summary
Twistersis tearing past its box office projections and outperforming the original movie by a considerable margin. The new movie, which was directed by Lee Isaac Chung and stars Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos, is a standalone sequel to the 1996 smash hit disaster movieTwister. The original became the second highest-grossing movie of the year with a worldwide gross of $495.7 million. TheTwistersbox officewill likely need to earn something between $500 million and $600 million to turn a profit against its whopping $200 million budget.
PerDeadline, as of Sunday morning,Twistersis projected to earna 3-day opening weekend gross of $80.5 million. This is a considerable boost from Saturday’s projection of $74.6 million. It also exceeds its original early projections considerably, as its estimates were placed anywhere between $40 million and $55 million, meaning that it has more than doubled the lower end of its projections. This opening weekend gross will also blow the original movie out of the water, as it debuted to a total of $41 million.
Twisters Crowds Out The Rest Of The Domestic Chart
Every Movie In The Top 5 Has Moved Except One
Naturally, the arrival of a major new release hit has knocked essentially every other movie on the previous weekend’s Top 5 domestic chart down a peg.Twisters' enormous gross has landed it at No. 1 for the weekend, as it has earned nearly $60 million more than the No. 2 title,Despicable Me 4, ending the animated sequel’s two-week reign at the top of the chart. Below, see the full domestic Top 5 for the weekend, featuring the most up-to-date numbers as of Sunday morning:
1
$80.5 million
$80.5 million (weekend 1)
2
$23 million
$259 million (weekend 3)
3
$12.7 million
$596 million (weekend 6)
4
$11.7 million
$44.6 million (weekend 2)
5
$6.1 million
$127.6 million (weekend 4)
The only release that hasn’t seen any movement after theTwistersmoviedropped down isInside Out 2, which has maintained its spot at No. 3 with a solid $12.7 million haul in its sixth weekend. The holdover horror hitLonglegsmoved around it, falling from No. 2 to No. 4 (and pushingA Quiet Place: Day Oneto No. 5), though it has only dropped 48%, which isunusual for the second weekend of a horror release, as the genre usually experiences more severe drops of 50% or more.
The only movie that is out of the Top 5 completely is the Space Race rom-comFly Me to the Moon, which stars Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. The movie, which opened to an underwhelming $10 million against its whopping $100 million budget, was previously No. 5. It has nowfallen to No. 6 with a 3-day total of $3.2 million, representing a harsh 66% drop.Longlegs, which opened the same weekend, has blown it out of the water with a buzzy publicity campaign, strong word of mouth, and a budget below $10 million.
How Twisters Compares To Other 2024 Hits
The Twister Sequel Could Land In The Top 5 Before Long
It remains to be seen how much theTwistersreleasecan earn by the end of its run. However, if it keeps on its current path, itcould become one of the highest-grossing movies of the year before the end of the summer. While it can’t compete with the No. 1 title,Inside Out 2, its debut shows that it will be strong competition for other 2024 titles when compared to the rest of the year’s biggest hits. Below, see the opening weekends and box office totals for the Top 10 movies of the year at the time of writing:
$154.2 million
$1.4 billion
$82.5 million
$711.8 million
$80 million
$567.6 million
$57.9 million
$545.6 million
$75 million
$458.1 million
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
$58.4 million
$396.3 million
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
$56.5 million
$379.6 million
$52.2 million
$226 million
$24 million
$220.5 million
$45 million
$201.8 million
Because it has exceeded $80 million during its opening weekend, the disaster movie seemson track to join the Top 5 highest-grossing movies of the yearbefore long.Despicable Me 4is still in theaters and thus will probably climb pastKung Fu Panda 4before long, allowing the new movie to also slide pastKung Fu Panda 4and its $57.9 million opening to become the No. 5 movie of the year so far. This would be in keeping with the box office track record ofTwisterscastmember Glen Powell.
Despicable Me 4opened midweek over the Fourth of July holiday, taking No. 1 over the 5-day weekend.
Powell has been the lead of two recent movies that have vastly exceeded expectations, beginning with the similarly belated 2022 sequelTop Gun: Maverick, which became the No. 2 movie of the year worldwide with a $1.49 billion gross. His 2023 romantic comedyAnyone But Youshowed even more staggering growth, with its total ballooning to $220.1 million despite a meager $6 million opening. IfTwistersbecomes an enduring hit like either of Powell’s previous movies,it could continue to exceed expectations for weeks to comeand potentially climb even higher up the chart.
Twisters
Cast
A follow-up to the 1996 original film Twister, Twisters is a sequel set years after the original, said to be fast-tracked by Steven Spielberg and Mark L. Smith, with Frank Marshal as producer. Little details exist about the film, but Helen Hunt is expected to reprise her role as Jo, with the film likely to pay homage to the late Bill Paxton.
