Twisters Opens Huge With Biggest Opening Weekend For A Disaster Movie Ever

The natural disaster movie Twisters debuted in theaters this past weekend, and it had a great start. The movie stormed up $80.5 million in North America alone, which gives Twisters the biggest opening-weekend box office results for a natural disaster movie in the history of movies, not adjusted for inflation.

The previous record-holder was Rolan Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, which opened with $68.44 million back in 2004.

Twisters also becomes the third-best start in North America so far in 2024, trailing only Dune: Part II ($82.5 million) and Inside Out 2 ($154.2 million). Twisters is tracking just ahead of Gozilla x Kong: The New Empire, which made $80 million over its opening weekend earlier this year in North America.

Twisters is a follow-up to 1996’s Twister, which starred the late Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. That film was a smashing success, too, earning $41 million over its opening weekend in North America, which works out to $82 million today–ahead of what Twisters did. The original film made $494.5 million during its theatrical run globally, which equates to about $992 million today.

Twisters is crushing it at the domestic box office but has fallen short of expectations at international markets, earning $42.7 million internationally so far. All of these box office numbers came from The Hollywood Reporter.

Twisters stars Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos. It’s directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari), who believes movies should not have a message, and that’s why Twisters doesn’t reference climate change. For more, check out GameSpot’s Twisters review.