One question was whirling in the minds of movie fans during the 2024 Super Bowl on Sunday night.
Where’s Helen?!
After watching the new trailer for the movie “Twisters,” a follow-up to 1996’s disaster flick “Twister” that hits theaters on July 19, social media alighted with viewers praying for a cameo from original star Helen Hunt.
“I hope Helen Hunt makes a cameo in the new Twisters movie,” said user @_IAMeveryWoman on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter).
@JTMitcell87 wanted a glimpse of the actress, too. “I kept waiting for Helen Hunt to show up, drop a pun, then fire Dorothy sensors into a twister with a modified shotgun,” they wrote.
No such luck.
So, will Hunt make an appearance in the movie 28 years after she first chased tornadoes?
A Universal source told The Post the 60-year-old actress is not returning for “Twisters.”
The new film is instead led by Glen Powell (“Top Gun: Maverick”) as Tyler Owens, Daisy Edgar-Jones (“Where the Crawdads Sing”) as Kate Cooper and Anthony Ramos (“In the Heights”) as Javi.
Other roles are filled by Maura Tierney (“ER”), Kiernan Shipka (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and David Corenswet (DC’s new Clark Kent/ Superman in the upcoming “Superman: Legacy”).
An absent Hunt would gel with what Powell told Vogue in December — that “Twisters” is neither a reboot nor a sequel.
“It’s definitely not a reboot,” the 35-year-old actor said. “We’re not trying to re-create the story from the first one. It’s a completely original story.”
Powell added: “There are no characters from the original movie back, so it’s not really a continuation . . . It’s just its own stand-alone story in the modern day.”
Back in 2022, Deadline reported that the working story was about Jo (Hunt) and Bill’s (Paxton) daughter following in her parents’ footsteps. That possibility has not been dismissed.
In the nearly 30 years since the original film spun into theaters, some original cast members have died.
Hunt’s co-star, Bill Paxton, who also appeared in films such as “Aliens,” “Titanic” and “Apollo 13,” died in 2017 at age 61.
Another star, Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, died in 2014 at age 46.
But audiences still want Hunt, especially as the actress has said she pitched a sequel concept four years ago. Her idea was rejected.
“I tried to get it made,” Hunt said on “Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen” in 2021. “With Daveed [Diggs] and Rafael [Casal] and me writing it, and all black and brown storm chasers, and they wouldn’t do it. I was going to direct it . . . We could barely get a meeting, and this is in June of 2020 when it was all about diversity. It would have been so cool.”
Diggs, 42, told Insider in 2023 that the circumstances behind Hunt’s concept not going forward were “shady.”
“All I’ll say is there was an opportunity where we were talking about that, and it didn’t happen,” the “Hamilton” star said. “And the reasons that it didn’t happen are potentially shady. But shady in the way that we know the industry is shady.”
