Helen Hunt's pitch for 'Twister' sequel with 'all Black and brown storm chasers' was rejected

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 6/11/21

Helen Hunt was asked if she can safely say she has had her "role of a lifetime" by Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, and she said no "just because I greedily want the next one."

And at one point, Hunt wanted her next project to be a sequel of Oscar-nominated 1996 thriller Twister.

“I tried to get it made,” Hunt said (h/t Yahoo). “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."

Hunt later added at the conclusion of the Watch What Happens Live After Show: "We could barely get a meeting, and this is in June of 2020 when it was all about diversity. And it would've been so cool. There's an HBCU near Nashville where we wanted it to take place and a rocket science club, and in this one, they shoot the rockets into the tornado. It was gonna be so cool."

Twister came out in May 1996—two years before Hunt became the first actress to claim an Oscar (As Good as It Gets) and Emmy (Mad About You) in the same year—and starred Hunt as fearless storm chaser Dr. Jo Harding. Bill Paxton played her husband, Bill Harding, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman also starred. The movie was co-written by Michael Crichton, known for creating ER , and Steven Spielberg served as an executive producer.

Hunt was able to team up with Casal and Diggs for the series Blindspotting, based of off Casal and Diggs' 2018 film of the same name, debuting on STARZ this Sunday:

Watch more clips from Hunt's visit with WWHL alongside Julianne Moore, where she also discussed working with the late Cloris Leachman on the Mad About You limited series reboot, below.