Twister director Jan de Bont has said that the long-awaited sequel, Twisters, is "a little bit late".

The original movie - released in 1996 - followed a group of tornado chasers as they encountered one of the biggest tornadoes the US has ever seen, with a cast including Helen Hunt and the late Bill Paxton.

Almost 30 years later, a standalone sequel from director Lee Isaac Chung has been made, following a similar plot to the original with a new generation of chasers.

"I think it is a little bit late," De Bont told ComicBook.com. "I think it should have been done 15 years ago, because then you might've still had a chance to do this combination of visual effects and special effects, and now it'll be much more visual effects, I'm sure. But that's being cost-effective.

"Those things are really... it's so different now. I think my movie would be really hard to remake, and why would you want to remake it anyway? What would you improve? Sometimes you have to also let things alone, or you have to really make it a real sequel, like a real continuing story, and not just a completely different story, but I don't know. I'm curious what [Chung] made of it."

Twisters is released on July 17, 2024.