“Twisters” blows past expectations and the competition with $80.5 million debut

Glen Powell: officially a movie star.

The Glen Powell Express has left the station, making all stops straight to the top.

Twisters, the sequel to the 1996 mega-blockbuster Twister about a group of tornado chasers, exceeded expectations at the weekend box office, grossing $80.5 million in its domestic debut. Along with its international cume of $42.7 million, the Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) film has grossed $123 million globally. .

Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing) and Anthony Ramos (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) are serious storm chasers Kate and Javi who butt heads with and Powell's brash influencer Tyler, nicknamed the "Tornado Wrangler," but they're forced to come together to try to predict, and possibly tame, the immense power of tornadoes.

"I understand that when my function within the movie is fun, I get to be a wild, rowdy cowboy," Powell told Entertainment Weekly. "While everyone else is driving as quickly away from a tornado as they possibly can, I'm the guy driving directly into it. It was just a blast to play. Tyler is who everyone wants to be, the guy that's hollering and screaming and laughing when the chaos is happening."

Related: 19 ways Twisters references original blockbuster Twister in 'standalone sequel'

In second place, Despicable Me 4 earned $23.8 million in its third week of release, for a domestic cume of $259.5 million ($574.4 million globally). In its sixth week of release, Inside Out 2 pulled in $12.8 million, bringing it domestic gross to $596.4 million. With its global gross at $1.4 billion, Inside Out 2 is currently the second highest grossing animated film of all time and will soon take over the No. 1 spot from Frozen 2.

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The horror thriller Longlegs starring Nicolas Cage continues to do solid box office, particularly for a non-franchise, non-sequel film, earning $11.7 million, for a two-week domestic haul of $44.7 million ($56.1 million globally). And rounding out the top 5, A Quiet Place: Day One grossed $6.1 million, for a four-week domestic take of $127.6 million ($241.4 million globally).

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.