Despite the formidable filmography and success Bill Paxton has accrued over the years (most recently and notably in HBO’s hit series “Big Love”), the dude is and will forever be known as Chet from WEIRD SCIENCE to me. Fact. Be that as it may, the man recently sat down with Bullz-Eye to push the new season of his show, and at one point expressed interest in making a 3D sequel to the 1996 Jan de Bont film TWISTER. Say whaaaa?
It’s legit. According to the interview (via Premium Hollywood), Paxton offered this:
“I flew into St. Louis with my buddy Scott Thomson, who played Preacher in ‘Twister,’ and we rented a car and drove down to southeastern Missouri, into the Ozarks,” said Paxton. “We spent the night, and the next morning we got up and we started tracking the trail of the most famous tornado that ever hit the country, which was the Tri-State Tornado of 1925. It still holds all of the records. It was called the Tri-State because it was a mile wide when it came down from the sky on the afternoon of March 16, 1925, and it was a rural area, but, boy, before it was through, it crossed the Mississippi, it cut across southern Illinois, where it hit a lot of towns. The biggest one was Murphysboro, which was…it literally looked like Hiroshima after it hit. And then it went across the Wabash, into Indiana, staying on the ground three and a half hours and cutting a damage path 219 miles long, killing about 700 people. There’s actually footage that I found in Murphysboro at their historical society. They had footage from a biplane that the government sent down, just to do aerial footage of all of the destruction and the damage. So we just did that to kind of get some ideas, and from that I kind of extrapolated an idea for a sequel. And I kind of put that together into a format, and now we’re kind of waiting to see if that’s going to move forward. That would need Steven Spielberg’s blessing, ultimately, and they probably won’t take it to him ‘til there’s real studio interest, but I think the 3D applications of that could obviously be pretty amazing.”
Would they ever! Paxton goes on to add:
“The only reason I’d like to revisit that ground is because I realize we’re living in a time where big movies cost so much to make that the town is looking for built-in audiences. Of course, I’m so glad to see that the success of ‘Avatar’ is disproving that theory, but…I always thought the first ‘Twister’ was an exciting ride, but I thought a sequel could explore it in a more enthralling way, getting into more of the history and the lore, more of a darker version of the first one.
I think you’d still want to have a lot of the dark humor and all of that, with the flying cows and everything…“I think you could kind of intrigue people more by getting into a little more of the lore and really understanding. I just think there’s a lot more to explore there. When I researched the first film when I was getting ready to do it, I just found so much stuff. Ultimately, I was happy with ‘Twister,’ but I also had thought that it could’ve gotten a little deeper into it.”
I actually think Paxton is on to something here. With the current Hollywood trend to push the 3D medium, here’s a story that intrinsically calls for such technology. It wouldn’t seem forced, per se, but an augmentative tool to help make a natural disaster that much more visceral. I’m in!
Read more HERE when the full story expands Jan. 15th!
Amanda Seyfried, Paxton’s soon to be leaving “Big Love” co-star!
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