‘Twisters’ Tears Through Oklahoma On The Big Screen. Moviegoers In The State Are Buying Up Tickets

Moore, Oklahoma – Twisters Grace Evans witnessed one of Oklahoma’s most violent and devastating tornadoes: a roaring top-of-the-scale nightmare in 2013 that plowed through homes, ripped through a school, and killed 24 people in Moore, a small town.

A hospital and a bowling alley were also damaged. But not at the movie theatre next door, when nearly a decade later, Evans and her teenage daughter bought two tickets to see the smash “Twisters.”

“I was looking for that element of excitement and I guess drama and danger,” Evans told me.

‘Twisters’ Tears Through Oklahoma On The Big Screen. Moviegoers In The State Are Buying Up Tickets

Her daughter also stepped out with a fan. “It was so realistic. “I was scared,” said Charis Evans, 15.

The spectacular popularity of “Twisters” has whipped up moviegoers in Oklahoma, embracing the summer hit, even in places devastated by catastrophic tornadoes. Even before the film hit theatres, Oklahoma officials had thrown out the red carpet for producers, authorizing what is expected to be millions of dollars in incentives to film in the state.

The action-packed thriller starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell grossed $80.5 million in its first weekend in North America, with over 4,150 theatres. Some of the largest audiences have come from the tornado-prone Midwest.

The Regal Warren in Moore was the best-performing theatre in the country on opening weekend, showing the picture in ten of its seventeen auditoriums from 9 a.m. to midnight. According to John Stephens, the theater’s general manager, many customers wanted to watch the film in a theatre that had survived a massive tornado.

“The people who live in Tornado Alley have a certain defiance towards mother nature,” he stated, “almost like a passion to fight storms, which was depicted by the characters in ‘Twisters.'”

The film’s director, Lee Isaac Chung believed setting the picture in Oklahoma was vital.

“I convinced everyone that this was something we needed to do. “We can’t simply have blue screens,” Chung told the Associated Press earlier this year. “We’ve got to be out there on the roads with our pickup trucks and in the green environments where this story takes place.”

The film was shot in various sites throughout Oklahoma, and the studio took advantage of a rebate incentive in which the state directly reimburses production firms for up to 30% of eligible expenses, including labor.

Oklahoma officials stated the exact amount of money spent on “Twisters” is still being tallied. However, the film is precisely the type of blockbuster Sooner State lawmakers envisioned when they upped the program’s funding from $8 million to $30 million per year in 2021, according to Jeanette Stanton, head of Oklahoma’s Film and Music Office.

In recent years, significant films and television programs have taken use of Oklahoma’s film incentives, including “Reagan” ($6.1 million), “Killers of the Flower Moon” ($12.4 million), and the television shows “Reservoir Dogs” ($13 million) and “Tulsa King” ($14.1 million).

Stanton said she is not shocked by the popularity of “Twisters,” especially in Oklahoma.

“You love seeing your state on the big screen, and I think for locals across the state, when they see that El Reno water tower falling down, they think: ‘I know where that is!'” she said.

“It’s almost as if Oklahoma was a character in the film,” she told me.

‘Twisters’ Tears Through Oklahoma On The Big Screen. Moviegoers In The State Are Buying Up Tickets

Mayor Johnny Kelley of Barnsdall, northeast Oklahoma, said he expected most neighbors would accept the film after a tornado killed two people and destroyed more than 80 homes in May.

“Some will; some will not. Things affect people in different ways, you know?” said Kelley, a firefighter in nearby Bartlesville. “I really don’t ever go to the movies or watch TV, but I might go see that one.”

SOURCE | AP