Incredible Photo Of Tornado-Damaged Kentucky Movie Theater That Inspired ‘Twisters’ Ending

In “Twisters,” each of the six major tornadoes created by visual effects supervisor Ben Snow was based on an actual tornado. In the case of the film’s final tornado, which marks the climax of the third act, it was inspired by three different tornadoes, including the 2021 tornado that devastated Mayfield, Kentucky, and killed 76 people.

A photo taken inside a Mayfield movie theater played a particularly important role in director Lee Isaac Chung’s conception of the film: The tornado’s winds, having ripped away the theater’s screen wall, left a movie-screen-sized hole that perfectly framed the real-life destruction unfolding next door. Beyond setting the climactic scene in a similar-looking movie theater—our heroes seek refuge there, unable to find an available basement in time—the photo spoke to Chung on several different levels, which he discussed on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast.