After the first trailer for Twisters 2 debuted, the question of whether Helen Hunt will return for the 2024 sequel is being asked.
Amongst the multiple major movie trailers from Super Bowl LVIII came the first look at Universal Pictures' Twisters, the legacy sequel following up on the hit 1996 film Twister.
Twisters 2 features Top Gun: Maverick's Glen Powell along with Ironheart's Anthony Ramos and new Superman star David Corenswet. The upcoming blockbuster focuses on a new group of storm chasers looking to test an experimental weather alert system, tying back to the action seen in the original film.
Will Helen Hunt Be in 2024's Twisters 2?
The first trailer for 2024's Twisters highlighted the story of Daisy Edgar-Jones' leading heroine, following in the footsteps of Helen Hunt's Jo Harding and the late Bill Paxton's Bill Harding from the original Twister.
But after Paxton passed away in 2017, fans are wondering whether Helen Hunt will reprise her role in the 2024 sequel, which has not been officially confirmed yet after she was absent from the trailer.
According to actor The Little Mermaid star Daveed Diggs (per Business Insider), he and Hunt were intent on directing a sequel to Twister years ago, which would have seen him work with Hunt and Loki star Rafael Casal.
Diggs explained the sequel never got made for "potentially shady" reasons, noting that he and Hunt "barely got a meeting" for the film, which would have featured a more diverse cast:
"But 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 spoke to Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live (via Yahoo) in 2021 on how the sequel would have featured "all Black and Brown storm chasers" and that she would have directed it.
However, she, Diggs, and Casal "could barely get a meeting," even considering the increased efforts by many studios to get more diverse casting in movies:
"I tried to get it made. With Daveed, and Rafael and me writing it, and all Black and Brown storm chasers, and they wouldn't do it. I was going to direct it. We could barely get a meeting. And this is in June of 2020 when it was all about diversity. And it would have been so cool. There was a HBCU [historically Black college and university] 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."
Twisters 2 takes the technology developed by Hunt and Paxton's characters in the original as Edgar-Jones and Powell's characters chase new storms.
However, there is no official confirmation on whether Hunt will return or not. Hunt has not spoken publicly about the sequel since it wrapped filming in December 2023, and Universal has not shared whether her character will be in the film to interact with her on-screen daughter.
Unfortunately, Hunt's return was further put into doubt in an interview from Vogue with Glen Powell.
Shortly after wrapping shooting, he commented on Twisters being "a completely original story" that has no ties to the original film, further saying "it's not really a continuation:"
"We just wrapped it a couple nights ago. It’s definitely not a reboot. We’re not trying to recreate the story from the first one. It’s a completely original story. There are no characters from the original movie back, so it’s not really a continuation. It’s just its own standalone story in the modern-day."
Twisters will debut in theaters on July 19.
