Moviefone Editorial

Tag: devotion

Glen Powell joins ‘Twisters’
Glen Powell plays “Hangman” in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films.

Though he’s been working solidly for a few years now, Glen Powell is certainly having a moment thanks to his breakout role as Lt. Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’. He’s in demand and is now apparently in talks for another big gig.

As first reported on The Hot Mic Podcast, Powell has his eye on a role in ‘Twisters’, the follow-up to Jan de Bont’s 1996 heavy weather thriller, which starred Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt.
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‘Fresh’ actor Daisy Edgar-Jones is already aboard to star, and we could certainly see her and Powell as a charismatic lead duo.

Daisy Edgar-Jones in ‘Where the Crawdads Sing.’ Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures.

Related Article: A Sequel to 1996’s ‘Twister’ is Spinning Up at Universal, and Helen Hunt Could Return

Tell me about ‘Twister’

The original movie, which also featured the likes of Cary Elwes, Jami Gertz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck and Todd Field (yes, the director of ‘Little Children’ and ‘TAR’) told the story of the Hardings (Hunt and Paxton) who must deal with their collapsing marriage even as they reunite to create an advanced weather warning system.

‘Twister’ was a success, earning $494 million worldwide, and lauded for its state-of-the-art effects. Yet no sequel was developed until much more recently.

Mark L. Smith, who wrote ‘The Revenant’ and George Clooney’s ‘The Midnight Sky’, has crafted a script that reportedly focus on the now-grown daughter of Jo and Bill Harding, who is a chip off the old storm-chasing block.

Steven Spielberg (who was a producer on the 1996 movie) is said to be thrilled by the new screenplay and eager for the movie to be made. And all involved are hoping that they can tempt Hunt back in some capacity, even if just for a cameo. Paxton, of course, sadly died in 2017.

Despite early work kicking off on this one back in 2020, you can certainly point to ‘Maverick’ being a spur for fresh development on this front. And in fact, that movie’s director Joseph Kosinski was attached to what was then being described as a reboot.

Though Kosinski ended up leaving to focus on the Formula One racing movie he has in development at Apple with Brad Pitt starring, the behind-the-scenes team is still being led by producer Frank Marshall (his wife and fellow powerhouse producer Kathleen Kennedy worked on the original with Spielberg).

Now, ‘Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung is in the director’s chair and Edgar-Jones is most likely playing the daughter character. We’ll have to wait and see how Powell fits in.

Daveed Diggs in ‘Extrapolations,’ premiering March 17, 2023 on Apple TV+.

In related ‘Twister’ sequel news, Daveed Diggs has spoken to Insider about another potential follow-up with which he was involved. Hunt stars in the ‘Blindspotting’ TV series that Diggs and Rafael Casal spun off from their indie movie. In 2021 they pitched the idea of Hunt directing a new take on ‘Twister’. But it didn’t happen, and Diggs has his suspicions as to why.

Here’s what he said,

“Oh man, I’m not going to get into it mostly because I’m probably going to misremember things. 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.”

The answer, my friends, is probably blowing in the wind.

Bill Paxton as Dr. William “Bill/The Extreme” Harding in 1996’s ‘Twister.’

Other Movies Similar to ‘Twisters:’
- ‘Twister‘ (1996)
- ‘The Perfect Storm‘ (2000)
- ‘The Day After Tomorrow‘ (2004)
- ‘2012‘ (2009)
- ‘The Impossible‘ (2012)
- ‘Greenland‘ (2020)
- ‘Where the Crawdads Sing‘ (2022)
- ‘Top Gun: Maverick‘ (2022)
- ‘Devotion‘ (2022)
Buy ‘Twister’ On Amazon
April 14, 2023
Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell Talk ‘Devotion’

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Opening in theaters on November 23rd is the new biographical war drama ‘Devotion,’ which was directed by J.D. Dillard (‘Sweetheart’).

Based on the true story of U.S. Navy fighter pilot Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors), the film follows his friend friendship with Tom Hunder (Glen Powell) and their role in the Korean War.

In addition to Majors and Powell, the movie also stars Christina Jackson, Joe Jonas, Thomas Sadoski, and Serinda Swan.

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell about their work on ‘Devotion,’ why as a producer Powell wanted to make the film, and the responsibility Majors felt playing Jesse Brown and bringing his story to the big screen.

(L to R) Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell star in Sony Pictures’ ‘Devotion.’

You can read or full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Majors, Powell, Joe Jonas, Thomas Sadoski, and director J.D. Dillard.

Moviefone: To begin with, Glen, as a producer, what moved you about Jesse Brown’s true story and why did you think it was important to bring it to the big screen?

Glen Powell: Adam Makos wrote just an incredible book that not a lot of people had read. At the time, it was a not a very well-known book. Then I just saw a beautiful and complicated relationship between two guys that came from different places that were trying to understand each other. What I loved about it was it wasn’t simplified.

There’s been stories of white and Black on different sides, achieving different things, and they simplify these things. It’s always so disheartening to see how Hollywood can try to, I don’t know, I would say profit off of the simplification of what I consider a very nuance and important subject to get right. Because the truth can move and the truth can change.

(L to R) Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell in Sony Pictures’ ‘Devotion.’

MF: Finally, Jonathan, can you talk about your approach to playing Jesse Brown and if you felt a certain responsibility to his family and his legacy while playing this role?

Jonathan Majors: Getting something right, very much to my brother’s point before, there’s one door in, and you hit it. If you get something truthful, there’s multiple doors in and everyone can get into the room. From soup to nuts, when it was brought to me, when we had our conversation, it felt to me that we were going to get it right via the truth.

That was something I really took on, that was in the culture of making the film from the very beginning, from its conception. So playing Jesse, I knew that was something that I wanted to execute. It’s something that I had to use all my faculties and enlist help in order to get information about who this man was. We had a beautiful Zoom set up by the producers and our director with the family early on.

I’ll be brief, I remember them telling all these stories about Jesse and we’re laughing, and we’re crying. I remember one of the producers saying, “Well, the film’s only so long and we can’t get all that in.” I interrupted and I said, “No, we can. I’m promising you that I will do my damnedest to get everything you just said into this film.”

Because what they were expressing in their stories wasn’t the actions or plot, but was a feeling and was a certain spirit of this man. That was my touchstone. That Zoom with maybe 10 to 15 members of his immediate family, that’s the touchstone.

That’s what I’m going to try to do in addition to all the research and the flight training. So, because of that, it’s not just me and my aspirations to tell a great story that I’m trying to live up to. I have the responsibility of those 10 to 15 individuals with various last names, but all from the lineage of Jesse Brown in my psyche, and in my mind that I’m trying to just get that approval from.

So, there’s two ways to look at it. Some people can look at that as pressure. I looked at it as support. So, I have all these people helping me push this plane into the sky along with my brother Glen and everyone else.

(L to R) Joe Jonas, Jonathan Majors, Glen Powell, Thomas Sadoski, and the cast of Sony Pictures’ ‘Devotion.’
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November 23, 2022
‘Devotion’ Trailer Takes Flight

(L to R) Joe Jonas, Jonathan Majors, Glen Powell, Thomas Sadoski, and the cast of Sony Pictures’ ‘Devotion.’

We’re about to see actor Glen Powell soaring through the sky as cocky, confident Naval aviator Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’. But that won’t be the only chance we’ll have to see him flying planes in theaters this year.

Because Powell is starring alongside ‘Loki’s Jonathan Majors in new Korean war aviation drama ‘Devotion’.

The focus of this new film – which is based on the astonishing true story that was chronicled in Adam Makos’ book ‘Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice’ – is Naval aviator Jesse L. Brown (Majors) and his unlikely friendship with fellow pilot Tom Hudner (Powell), a friendship that crossed racial lines of demarcation in the 1950s.

These two elite US Navy fighter pilots were flying during the Korean War, and their heroic sacrifices would ultimately make them the Navy’s most celebrated wingmen.
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Brown forms a bond that goes beyond friendship with fellow aviator Tom Hudner (Glen Powell), a clean-cut soldier from New England who passed up a chance to attend Harvard in favor of joining the Navy. Brown and Hudner find themselves in an unimaginable situation when one is shot down behind enemy lines and pinned in his burning plane, while the other attempts a seemingly impossible one-man rescue mission.

“Tom and Jesse are more soulmates than best friends, which is deep,” Majors tells People magazine. “There’s no escaping each other. They are forever each other’s men, even in death.”

He credits Powell with keeping the camaraderie levels high between the cast behind the scenes, too. “Glen was really good at getting all the guys together,” Majors says. “He and Joe (Jonas), Daren (Daren Kagasoff) — all the guys — they would get together and play at the park. And the park was right down the street from my house, so as I was walking my dogs or riding my bike, I’d see the guys, and we’d hang out and chat.”

(L to R) Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell in Sony Pictures’ ‘Devotion.’

And the film’s director, J.D. Dillard has his own reasons for making the movie. Not least of which was that his father was a Navy pilot. “It’s always kind of stayed with me, and it’s been such a part of his identity,” he tells Vanity Fair.

Yet it was the screenplay by Jonathan Stewart and Jake Crane that truly inspired him to lobby for the job directing it. “It was the first time in forever I had cried while reading a script,” he says. “It’s rare when the thing that you’re working on so deeply reaches into your own life, your own history, your own family.”

‘Devotion’ also stars Serinda Swan, Thomas Sadoski, Joseph Cross, Spencer Neville, Matt Riedy, Logan Macrae, Nick Hargrove, Boone Platt, Emily Brinks and Christina Jackson. It’ll soar into theaters this October.
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May 26, 2022