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Twisters Blows Away Box Office Projections With Massive Opening Weekend
The disaster movie claimed the third-highest-grossing opening weekend of 2024.
Ironic that a disaster movie is helping to rescue the 2024 box office from disaster. Twisters, the spiritual sequel to the classic ‘90s blockbuster, did even better than expected over its opening weekend in theaters. Twisters, which opened on July 19, made $81.25 million over its opening weekend in the United States, making it the third-biggest opening weekend of the year.
Expectations for Twisters, which stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as tornado-chasers amid an unprecedented storm season in Oklahoma, were good. Before the movie premiered, it was predicted to make somewhere between $50 and $55 million in its opening weekend. The final total of $81.25 blows those early estimates away, obviously.
RELATED: Glen Powell Says Filming Twisters Involved a "Jet Engine Hitting Us with Ice"
Twisters now claims the third-highest opening of the year. Last month Inside Out 2 made $154 million in its opening weekend while Dune: Part Two just edges Twisters out for the silver medal, having brought in $82 million during its March 1 opening weekend.
Internationally, Twisters has swept up $124.7 in total. The film cost $155 million to make, not including promotional expenses, but after this massive opening weekend, it seems assured that the movie will turn a profit.
According to Variety, two factors helped contribute to Twisters’ box office success. The first was that the movie is a natural fit for premium formats like IMAX and especially 4DX, which basically turns a movie into a theme park ride with moving seats and little jets of water. These tickets cost more than a normal screening, contributing to the greater box office total. Second was that Twisters was popular across the middle of the country and not just the coasts, which tend to be the biggest moviegoing hot spots. A theater in Oklahoma City was the top-earning theater for Twisters — not one in New York or Los Angeles, as is often the case with big blockbusters. (Perhaps that’s fitting, as it's the Plains and the Midwest, not the coasts, that are more familiar with tornadoes.)
RELATED: Get Blasted by Tornado-Force Winds Before Seeing Twisters at These Movie Theaters
Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, Twisters has received largely positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, which is a flawed but helpful gauge of the response to a film, 77 percent of critics gave Twisters a positive review while the audience score sits at an even higher 92 percent approval. The film also received an A- CinemaScore. Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, and Sasha Lane co-star.
Twisters is now in theaters.
