Twister is getting the Hollywood reboot treatment

12:47 PM EDT on June 26, 2020

Although this will probably get me uninvited to Emily Sutton's annual Summertime Sunshine Jubilee, I have a confession to make – I hated the movie Twister.

When it was released in 1996, during the heart of that decade's drab summer blockbuster disaster film boom, I thought it was an absurdly unrealistic, poorly written flick that reinforced the folksy, churchy, country lovin' stereotype of the Oklahoma people that still exists today. But...I did think it was cool that it was filmed in Oklahoma, and that some girl I barely knew from high school got to play the role of Drive-In Girl.

Nearly 25 years later, my feelings about the movie have warmed a little bit. It's not going to win any awards, but as the pic of Mike and Marla at the premiere attests, I do appreciate it as a relic of 1990s pop culture, and helping launch the craft of stormchasing into the jetstream. I'm also totally fine with this report from Deadline that the movie is getting a reboot:

Universal Pictures is looking to reboot the classic tentpole “Twister,” and looks to have found a director to weather the storm.
Sources tell Variety that Universal Pictures is developing a reboot of the 1996 blockbuster and is in negotiations with “Top Gun: Maverick” helmer Joseph Kosinski to direct.
Frank Marshall will produce the pic and the studio is currently meeting with writers to pen the script.
Plot details are vague on this latest version, but the original film starred Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, who play storm chasers and a couple on the brink of divorce. They team up to chase tornadoes in order to deliver their advance weather alert system that has to be placed in the path of the Twister.

So, they need help writing a movie script about people chasing tornadoes in Oklahoma? Hmmn. I wonder who they are going to find to do that? If only there was a handsome, talented writer out there with strong local roots who has spent over a decade providing original, popular, lawsuit-inspiring content about the Oklahoma weather culture and stormchasing scene. Seriously, does that person even exist? Maybe I should take another pilgrimage to Gary England's home town of Seiling. That will provide the answer.

While the producers are looking for writers to produce a script that, say, could be about Emily Harding – daughter of Bill and Jo – partnering with a young buckaroo stormchaser from Japan named Hirsoshi to track down Gary England's missing gold hailstones during a PDS weather event before they fall into the hands of an evil, muscular, spray-tanned weather troll who needs them to operate a mystical weather controlling flute, people like old OKC meteorologist Rick Mitchell – who made a cameo in the original Twister – are throwing their hats into the ring: