Take shelter! There’s a Twister movie reboot on the horizon

Don’t look now, but one of the biggest weather-related blockbusters of all time is barreling toward theaters for a second tornadic touchdown: A reboot of the box-office-smashing 1990s thriller Twister is reportedly in the works from Universal Pictures.

The new project, which is described by Variety as a reboot rather than a direct sequel, reportedly is courting director Joseph Kosinski. Kosinski is currently directing Tom Cruise in the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick, having worked with Cruise previously on the 2013 post-apocalyptic action film Oblivion. His sci-fi bona fides also include directing 2010's Tron: Legacy starring Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde.

Story details are currently as slight as the calm before a prairie storm, but super-producer Frank Marshall will reportedly produce the movie, which is in the process of filling out its writers’ room. Starring Helen Hunt and the late, great Bill Paxton, the original 1996 film thrust a fraught husband-and-wife dynamic against the storm-tossed adversity of real-life tornado chasing, culminating (of course) in the duo getting caught up in the twister of a lifetime on the plains of Oklahoma.

While cutting a big-screen swath of VFX destruction, Twister struck on a winning formula on its way to clearing a path through the global box office. Directed by Jan de Bont from a screenplay by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin, Twister swirled up nearly $500 million in ticket sales worldwide. The 1996 film was released domestically by Warner Bros., with Universal Pictures handling international distribution through an arrangement with co-executive producer Steven Spielberg.