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Last weekend, the North American box office champion finally changed. The disaster film "Twisters," distributed by Universal Pictures, unexpectedly ranked first with an opening box office of 80.5 million U.S. dollars, surpassing the animated film "Despicable Me 4," also from Universal Pictures.

Tornado poster

"Tornado": No political correctness, no environmental protection

The opening performance of "Twister" broke the record of natural disaster-themed movies at the North American box office. The previous record holder was "The Day After Tomorrow" (68.4 million US dollars) released 20 years ago. As for the reason for its success, some people attribute it to the victory of the theme, because American audiences are in need of a temporary escape from the "troublesome summer" of the real world. Others say it is because the male lead Glen Powell has become a new generation of American screen idol, mobilizing a large number of fans to buy tickets for him (according to PostTrak, a ticket survey service under the Internet market research and statistics company comScore, 24% of ticket buyers are for Powell). But in the final analysis, these are all hindsight analyses. After all, before the release of this film, the box office predictions of Universal Pictures, the distributor, and various industry media were basically around 50 million US dollars. No one would have thought that it would eventually exceed 80 million US dollars.

"Twister" is a remake of the 1996 film of the same name produced by Warner Bros. The original film opened at $41 million, which is equivalent to about $100 million today, taking into account inflation and ticket price fluctuations. In the end, the film earned a total North American box office of $242 million, which is about $600 million today. It is worth mentioning that the old version of "Twister" was also introduced and screened in my country, earning a high box office of 54.5 million yuan, which was the second highest-grossing Hollywood imported blockbuster at the time, second only to "True Lies".

Glen Powell as Tyler

However, although the new version of "Twister" was released simultaneously in China and North America, the opening box office in the three days of the weekend was only 11.296 million yuan, far less than "Your Name" (re-released) and "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Guardian" which premiered at the same time. In fact, not only in China, "Twister" generally performed poorly in markets outside the United States, with an overseas opening box office of only 42 million US dollars. Considering that the production cost of the film is more than 155 million US dollars, it is not unavoidable that Warner, which is responsible for overseas distribution, is under great pressure.

Back in the United States, the impact of the old version of "Twister" is not only on the film level. According to American media reports, in the years after the release of the film, the number of students choosing meteorology majors in American colleges and universities has increased by about 10%, especially at the University of Oklahoma, which participated in the production of "Twister". The number of meteorology students doubled from 225 to 450.

In the United States, the so-called "hurricane chasing" has become a new type of adventure entertainment. Bill Paxton, the protagonist of the original "Twister", has become a super idol in the minds of these "hurricane chasers". Even in the week before the release of this new version, the original "Twister" has always been among the top ten on the Apple iTunes streaming rental list.

The remake of "Twister" was directed by Lee Isaac Chung, a Korean-American director who had directed "Minari". It was somewhat surprising that he suddenly turned from an independent film to a big-budget disaster film. But in his opinion, he grew up in Arkansas, which is the home of tornadoes in the United States, so for him, shooting a new version of "Twister" was, in a sense, destiny.

In various interviews, many American media asked Director Zheng a question: Why did "Twister" never mention climate change and global warming? Obviously, extreme weather is becoming more and more frequent, and tornado disasters are increasing. Isn't it because the global climate is undergoing drastic changes? In this regard, he said that he did not think that the primary purpose of commercial films is to convey any message, or to educate the audience. "I just want to present the reality that is happening. For example, you can see from the plot that there are more and more disaster weather and the climate is changing. We don't avoid this. However, I never want the audience to think that I am promoting a certain message, because I think movies should not be like that from the bottom of my heart. I think movies should just be a reflection of the world."

Therefore, some industry insiders pointed out that "Twister" achieved excellent results in the central and southern regions of the United States when analyzing the film's box office success. The main reason is that the story theme is not politically correct and does not play the environmental card. In addition, a large number of American country music singers were invited to join the film promotion and record the soundtrack. In the end, the film won a box office far higher than the average in mainland cities such as Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, Oklahoma City and San Antonio.

Poster of "Long Legs"

"Long-legged Monster" continues to perform

As for old movies, the horror film "The Long Legs" continued to surprise with an impressive box office of 22.6 million US dollars in its first weekend, earning another 11.7 million US dollars in its second weekend. According to the distributor Neon Films, in the past decade, only 15 independent films in North America have opened with more than 20 million US dollars, and it is not easy for "The Long Legs" to be among them without any real first-line stars in front of and behind the scenes.

Of course, it may be a bit unfair to say that there are no big stars to join, for one of the leading actors, Nicolas Cage. After all, he is also the winner of the Oscar for Best Actor. However, in recent years, Cage has not been very particular about taking on roles because he has to repay his personal debts, and his reputation has been declining. He has been nominated for 8 Golden Raspberry Awards one after another. Although his popularity has returned since "Pig Rescue" in 2021, overall, he has not been able to completely reverse the audience's impression of "the king of bad movies." Therefore, when Neon Pictures promoted "Long Legs", it actually deliberately concealed many details about the role played by Nicolas Cage, and even his specific appearance was not disclosed in detail, so as not to let the audience preset their positions. Judging from the final box office results, this approach has indeed achieved certain results.

In the past few years, horror movies have been one of the most guaranteed movie genres at the box office, but the situation this year has been quite disappointing. The box office performance of films such as "The Omen" (global box office of 53 million US dollars), "Dark Swimming" (global box office of 54 million US dollars), and "Ballet of Blood" (global box office of 42 million US dollars) is mediocre. The production cost of "Long Legs" is less than 10 million US dollars. The promotion of Neon Pictures focuses on online digital marketing, and the estimated cost is also around 10 million US dollars. The box office of the first weekend has exceeded the sum of the two, so profitability is not a problem.

Global box office is expected to fully recover in 2026

Last week, PricewaterhouseCoopers released its annual entertainment industry outlook report, predicting that global box office will fully recover in 2026 and exceed the level in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, this mainly depends on the general increase in movie ticket prices.

In other words, even by 2028, the number of moviegoers will not be able to return to the level of 2019; and there will still be a huge gap of 1.5 billion people, that is, the number of moviegoers in 2028 is expected to be about 6.45 billion, while it was 7.92 billion in 2019. As for the reasons behind this, it involves "changes in consumer habits after the COVID-19 pandemic, the increasing popularity of streaming platforms, the impact of rising price inflation, and the audience's aesthetic fatigue with superhero movies."

At the beginning of last year, many organizations including PwC generally predicted that the global movie box office is expected to return to the level before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2025. However, due to the Hollywood strike, the supply of new films was greatly affected, which also caused PwC's latest outlook to postpone this time point by one year to 2026. Specifically, they believe that the global box office in 2025 will be close to 37.68 billion US dollars, which is still weaker than 38.55 billion US dollars in 2019, but it is estimated to reach 40.23 billion US dollars in 2026.