Jan de Bont’s 1996 “Twister” (Warner Bros.) is more than a cinematic guilty pleasure.
Produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin, the tornado-chase thriller shattered box office records at the time.
The marketing triumph not only influenced the way future trailers were crafted, but much like Marvel’s “Spider-Man” in 2002, “Twister” showed Hollywood that you could jumpstart the summer season in May.Warners was trying to get ahead of Paramount’s presumably more competitive new “Mission: Impossible,” starring Tom Cruise.
But “Twister” broke out bigger, partly because the earlier May entry gave it a chance to play right through the lucrative Memorial Day holiday.
“Twister” signaled that May was just as good a summer launchpad as June, and changed the rules forever.“Twister” ultimately outgrossed “Mission: Impossible” by about $140 million (all grosses are adjusted to 2020 ticket price levels) to become the #2 performer of 1996 (behind July’s VFX monster “Independence Day”).
But unlike “M:i,
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