How Universal Burned A Swath Through The Heartland & South, “Sold Fun” & Propelled

Universal

Hollywood whines there’s a lost moviegoing audience in the middle and southern part of the U.S. that the industry doesn’t make movies for.

Well, then make movies for them. That’s exactly what Universal, Warner Bros and Amblin did in rebooting Twisters to a grand stateside start of $80M, an awesome 60% ahead of its $50M+ forecast.

Hooking the middle of the country with this movie about a weather phenomenon that impacts them frequently was of course an immediate priority here for Universal. The studio smartly attached Arkansas native and 2x Oscar nominated Minari filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung to paint a portrait of the folks he grew up with — a move that speaks its yield at the weekend box office.

Universal was keen to promote the movie like an original, not relying on the 28-year-old property. The only character remaining from the first film was Dorothy, the weather machine.

The studio was also keen not to be exploitative in its materials to win over an audience that’s continually impacted by tornados. However, they soon learned that the people dealing with this weather phenomenon get excited by such art (noted by Oklahoma City busting through as one of the movie’s top grossing cities) apart from their real-life travails.

But there was something else in the ether working to Twisters‘ overperformance this weekend and that was people’s need to escape from the house and be entertained following the tragedy of the Donald Trump assassination attempt, the former POTUS remaining the No 1 choice for U.S. President this November. As a movie marketing maven told us this past weekend about Uni’s campaign, “They sold fun”.

When it comes to a movie about several tornados that appear during the course of two hours, it’s easy to broach climate change. But such left-leaning words didn’t come up during the feature; Uni also keeping the sell on this movie as apolitical as possible.

Of all the marketing lynchpins that heightened the movie’s profile was its country-infused soundtrack. What a pop Dua Lipa-Billie Eilish laced soundtrack did last summer for Barbie, a country fried one was essential for Twisters with 29 tracks by such artists as Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson, Bailey Zimmerman, Kane Brown, Thomas Rhett, Shania Twain, Charley Crockett, Flatland Cavalry, Tyler Childers and Megan Moroney. Speaking of Barbie, when Uni was meeting with record labels, they decided to work with Atlantic’s West Coast President Kevin Weaver over a Nashville-based company, as the exec was coming off the success of the Barbie soundtrack. Weaver has also assembled such soundtracks and cast albums as Hamilton and The Greatest Showman.

Combs’ “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” was released on May 16, the lead single off the Twisters soundtrack. The song was tied to the second trailer launch and ultimately busted into Billboard’s Top 10 Country Airplay chart. Combs performed the song during his summer tour which further propelled it to 120M+ global audio streams to date and 36K+ creations on TikTok totaling more than 225M views. As we told you over the weekend, Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos showed up on stage Friday night at Luke Combs’ concert at Jets stadium.

In total, the Twisters soundtrack has amassed 175M+ streams to date since dropping on May 29. Uni released one song a week for the past 10 weeks — plus a song a day this past week. The Jelly Roll Twisters song “Dead End Road” was used in the TV trailer for the pic. Other music highlight included a pic partnership with Bobby Bones, the No. 1 iHeart network country DJ.

Further engaging flyover state crowds, Universal teamed with NASCAR for a Street Race Intro spot featuring Twisters star Glen Powell and co-branded promo. The second trailer, which debuted on May 9, also aired the Darlington NASCAR event.

Sporting events from the onset of the campaign were a must with the first Twisters 30-second spot airing during Super Bowl LVIII, where it grabbed a viewership per RelishMix of 29.2M viewers in the day following the Big Game. Twisters was one of the top four Super Bowl trailers watched in addition to Deadpool & Wolverine, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Wicked. Other custom integrations included an MLB spot featuring Mike Trout, Copa America custom content, a WWE Monday Night Raw Takeover. Further Twisters spots aired across the top sporting events of the summer, including UFC, the Olympic Trials, UEFA Euro Cup, WNBA, All Elite Wrestling and even more NASCAR. Uni marketing leveraged the NBA Finals Game 1 to launch Twisters tickets going on sale.

Even the promotional partners screamed America on this film with Dodge RAM creating a custom campaign featuring Powell and footage from the film.

Workwear fashion brand Wrangler launched a collection with looks inspired by the film. Additional partners for the film included G-Shock and Frito.

Creating even more awareness outside New York and LA, Twisters cast undertook a cross-country promotional tour with stops in Dallas, Chicago and Miami while special screenings were held in Oklahoma and across military bases. What took that press tour to a heightened and logical level is that the cast sat down to speak with meteorologists.

Evidence of Twisters busting through between the coasts were how some markets popped, read of the top grossing cities there was Dallas (+38% over its 52-week norm), Houston (+23%), Phoenix (+12%), Atlanta (+5%), Oklahoma City (+229%) and San Antonio (+61%). Such middle America chains like B&B Theaters and San Antonio based Santikos surged over their annual norms respectively at 142% and 70%.

The 1996 movie Twister, which was conceived by bestselling Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton, was originally the second highest grossing movie at the B.O. that year with $241.7M; the pic’s May launchpad seeing the then birth of two big blockbusters: Twister and Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible (which was third highest grossing movie of 1996 at $180.9M). There were various attempts to develop a sequel at Twister‘s original domestic studio Warner Bros, but nobody could get the first pic’s EP Steven Spielberg onboard. It took the enthusiasm of The Revenant screenwriter Mark L. Smith to stoke Spielberg, which thus got the current project fast-tracked. 

In the wake of Warner Bros’ Clint Eastwood movie, American Sniper, playing like a Marvel movie to the heartland, with a domestic gross of $350.1M, you’d expect a flood of flyover IP, but there’s been few. There was Sound of Freedom last summer which surprised many as it played to a passionate red state base. As Hollywood yearns to increase the frequency of moviegoing, perhaps the further success of Twisters has convinced many heads of studios that there’s gold in those plains.