Twistershas officially descended into movie theaters, and starGlen Powellis paying tribute to the lateBill Paxtonwith an emotional and touching social media post. Paxton, who died back in 2017, was one of the leads in the original filmTwister(1996), which also starred Helen Hunt, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes, Alan Ruck and Jamie Gertz.
Twisteropened in cinemas during the summer movie season of ’96, and now Powell and his castmates are carrying on the “stormy” mantle almost 30 years later. Powell wrote in loving memory of his friend and colleague Paxton in a social media post (viaX,formerly Twitter):
As we release Twisters into the world today, I just wanted to look up and tip my hat to the legend that is Bill Paxton. A great friend of mine who saw poetry in the natural world. His boots are impossible to fill, but this life is all about chasing the greats.
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.
A few years before Paxton passed away, Powell and the late actor collaborated together on director Will Wallace’s Western,Red Wing(2013). The photo Powell shared of himself and Paxton on social media (below) is an image from that project.
Glen Powell Fondly Remembers Friend & Colleague Bill Paxton
Twistersstorms into theaters and begins its theatrical run with $10.7 million thanks to its preview screenings domestically on Thursday. And while the follow-up isn’t officially a sequel, there’s a strong emotional connection toTwisterthanks to the relationship formed between the franchise’s stars Bill Paxton and Glen Powell. And, as an added bonus,Paxton’s son James has a cameoin director Lee Isaac Chung’s disaster movie. Powell said in an interview withYahoo Entertainment:
“I think just knowing Bill and knowing how much this movie meant to him,and how he saw the world differently afterward,and then having his son James Paxton in this movie and shooting that sequence with him and hearing stories about Bill— it all grounds it in a way that’s hard to describe.”
Glen Powell’s Twisters Storms Out to a Higher Rotten Tomatoes Score Than the 1996 Original
Twisters is receiving mixed reviews from critics, but the film’s Tomatometer rating is still much higher than the original film.
Powell said of his relationship with Paxton and how that bond resulted in makingTwisterseven more “meaningful” during the same interview:
“I think that’s made this thing even more meaningful.[Twister] is a movie that really meant a lot to me as a kid, you know, growing up in Texas, it’s a movie that felt very…just very much a story of kind of the community I grew up around and the people I grew up around.”
Twistersis forecast to make $45 million to $50 milliondomestically over its opening weekend, and the film already has the advantage of posting a far, far better Rotten Tomatoes audience score with the fans (93%) than the original film ever did (58%). At the time of this writing, it’s still too early to reportTwisters’CinemaScore.
