What Happened to Helen Hunt's Rejected Twister Sequel Idea? 'It Would Have Been So Cool'

Years before Twisters, the so-called "standalone sequel" to 1996's tornado-chasing Twister, came to be, original star Helen Hunt had an idea for a follow-up.

"I tried to get it made," the Oscar-winning actress, now 61, said during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen back in 2021. On the show, she revealed her plans to make it with Hamilton star Daveed Diigs co-writing the script and her directing.

Hunt said her pitch made in June 2020 centered on "all Black and Brown storm-chasers." "They wouldn't do it," she said, adding "it would have been so cool."

Teasing further details, she said at the time, according to Insider, "There was a HBCU where we wanted it to take place, and a rocket science club, and in this one they shoot the rockets into the tornado. It was going to be so cool."

Diggs, 42, later gave more insight into the rejected pitch, saying to Insider in April 2023, "... All I'll say is there was an opportunity where we were talking about that, and it didn't happen, and the reasons that it didn't happen are potentially shady. But shady in the way that we know the industry is shady."

Hunt starred in the original Twister, directed by Jan de Bont, alongside Bill Paxton, Philp Seymour Hoffman, Jami Gertz, Alan Ruck and Cary Elwes.

The new film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Harry Hadden-Patton, David Corenswet, Daryl McCormack, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy O’Brian, Nik Dodani, Kiernan Shipka and Paul Scheer.

Twisters director Lee Isaac Chung said he was not involved in any discussions about Hunt's pitch.

“I don’t know what [Hunt’s] version was, and, unfortunately, I have not been able to talk to her nor Jan de Bont nor to anyone from the cast about the movie,” Chung told IndieWire.

“We have a few people who worked on the original in our crew. When I read the script, I really loved the approach they were taking with it, that it was going to be a new story, with new characters and an entirely new science project."

Chung added, "I really believe Helen Hunt is a genius, and I would have loved to work with her. That choice was just never a part of me coming on board with this, however."

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview alongside Hunt, Twister director de Bont said, "I don't know anything about the new movie; I wasn't involved and haven't seen it yet." Hunt told the outlet, "The fact that it holds up is amazing. I've been in big movies, and you look back, and you have to cringe a little bit because technology's come so far. But I don't know that it's come further than what Jan did with this movie."

Paxton, who died in 2017, told the AV Club back in 2012 that he would "love" to direct a potential Twister sequel one day. (Paxton's son James, 30, has a cameo in the new film.)

"I’ve always felt like there was a Jaws version of that movie. I always felt like we did the Pepsi Lite version of that movie," he said with a laugh at the time. "There’s a tougher version of that movie that I think now… I’ve kind of designed it so that me and Helen would have a daughter, a junior in high school, but she’s already dating a guy in college, and we’d kind of hand it off to them."

Twisters is in theaters now. 1996's Twister is streaming on Max.