With ‘Twisters,’ 4DX Finally Swept America. Where Does Hollywood Go From Here? (2024)

At a late-night New York screening of “Twisters,” I watch as a group of college students chase a Category 5 tornado as it ravages rural Oklahoma. As the twister picks up speed, the crew abandons its car, hoping to take shelter under an overpass. Braving the winds, three of them get sucked into the tornado and suffer terrible deaths. It’s a horrifying scene, but when it ends, the entire theater erupts in laughter.

That’s because we, too, were victims of a tornado. Granted, it was a manufactured one, undetectable on the EF Scale, and experienced from a cushioned chair in an air-conditioned auditorium. Nonetheless, we were whipped around, swept by the wind, even doused with water. Just as we recover, our seats start moving again, simulating truck tires cruising on a dirt road.

That’s the power of 4DX, baby. I coughed up $32 to see “Twisters” like this, when I — an AMC loyalist — could have seen it for free through my A-List subscription. That’s because the only 4DX theaters in New York City are situated in Regal cinemas, and because a friend texted me saying, verbatim, “You must see ‘Twisters’ in 4DX, as God intended.” My friend was right: “Twisters,” what I would call a B- movie, became, in 4DX, an A+ experience.

I wasn’t the only one who’d been convinced. Thanks to a calculated marketing campaign, word-of-mouth buzz and a viral TikTok trend in which moviegoers showed off exaggerated battle scars from the theater, “Twisters” spun into 4DX’s strongest domestic opening weekend of the year, taking in $2.3 million. That is, until one week later, when that record was beaten by “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which seized all but two of the country’s 64 4DX screens. With those two titles, 4DX scored two of its biggest movies ever, back to back.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing a movie in 4DX, let me give you the rundown. You sit in a heavy-duty chair not unlike a normal cinema recliner, and when the movie starts, you are immersed in the story via 20 off-screen special effects, including seat movement and vibration, water, wind, fog, strobe lighting and bubbles, the latter used to simulate blood. The effects are manually coded by South Korean mega-conglomerate CJ Group’s “programming artists” and tailored to each film with studio approval. For “Twisters,” which features four major tornado sequences, much of the movie functions like a roller coaster. But in quieter moments, like when Glen Powell strolls outside in a wet T-shirt, the only effects are a bit of mist and a girl two seats over moaning, “Oh my f*cking God.”

I saw “Twisters” in 4DX at Regal Union Square, but I hear the Times Square location is even better (with 296 seats, it’s the largest 4DX theater in the world). The severity of the seat movement was pleasantly surprising — I was expecting “It’s a Small World” and got “Space Mountain.” But while getting a taste of storm chasing was genuinely thrilling for a youngster like me, midway through the film I couldn’t help thinking that my motion sickness-prone mom would have turned her popcorn bucket into a barf bag by now.

Developed by CJ 4DPlex, a subsidiary of CJ Group, 4DX is the second-biggest premium large format after Imax — and it’s the most popular immersive seating format. The 4DX technology debuted commercially in Seoul in 2009 and, bolstered by the success of “Avatar,” expanded to Mexico, South America and Europe. The immersive format was introduced in the U.S. in 2014 with Paramount’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” but while theater owners say 4DX has provided a steady stream of revenue in the past decade, it didn’t really penetrate the cultural zeitgeist here until last month with “Twisters.”

Exhibitors were caught off guard by that success. “We thought it would do fine, but not anywhere near what it has done,” says Ken Thewes of Marcus Theatres, which has set aside 4DX showtimes for “Twisters” so it can play in conjunction with “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Borderlands.” Adds Eduardo Acuna, the CEO of Regal Cinemas, “‘Twisters’ was humongous. Calling it successful is an understatement.”

In its first three days, the disaster pic made $2.1 million in 4DX at Regal alone, passing the previous record holder, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” Perhaps propelled by the “Twisters” hype, “Deadpool & Wolverine” now holds that title with a $2.5 million 4DX domestic opening. (While 6% of “Deadpool &; Wolverine’s” domestic opening gross at Regal came from 4DX, that number for “Twisters” is a whopping 15%.)

Relative to the rest of the world, Americans are just getting introduced to immersive seating. Before “Twisters,” my only reference point was seeing “Shrek 4-D” as a child at Universal Studios Hollywood, which, I’m devastated to report, shut down the attraction seven years ago. While only 64 4DX screens exist in the U.S., there are 727 outside the U.S.

That provides a pathway to expansion for Regal, whose parent company, Cineworld, emerged from bankruptcy in August 2023. Regal owns 52 of the 64 4DX screens and, through a partnership with CJ Group, has plans to build a “significant number” of additional sites. And because “Twisters” thrived in 4DX despite opening one week before “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the cinema chain is bringing the movie — and its 1996 predecessor, “Twister” — back to the format for one week starting Aug. 30. Almost a month out from the rerelease, the twin tornado movies had together amassed more than $700,000 in presales, according to Don Savant, CEO of CJ 4DPlex’s U.S. operations.

“To get people out of their houses, you need to give them something that they can’t have at home,” Acuna says. Savant concurs: “It’s exactly what the cinemas need.”

The life cycle of a 4DX movie generally begins with the studios, which bring their films to CJ 4DPlex for programming. CJ’s editors in South Korea begin working on the movie three to four weeks prior to release, and then it undergoes a quality check with the studio. On rare occasions, a director will also demo the experience and provide feedback. Sometimes these checks are as easy as “This is awesome,” and other times the studios or filmmakers send back pages’ worth of notes.

“As filmmakers, they’re going to know something about the film that’s much more intrinsic to the storytelling, and they feel our effects and our motion code can become more additive,” says Paul Kim, head of 4DX’s studio and production team.

CJ brought 40 titles to 4DX in 2023, but “Twisters” — with its wind, rain and seat-gripping chaos — feels uniquely suited for the technology. Among the movies slated for 4DX are “Alien: Romulus,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” “Gladiator 2” and “Wicked.” The challenge for 4DX is persuading audiences to spend premium dollars for a chance to feel like they’re living in those stories.

But as the 4DX craze continues, Hollywood is treading carefully, with industry leaders referencing the digital 3D “gold rush” as a cautionary tale. “Every studio did every movie in 3D. Movies that had no business being in 3D were made in 3D. And many 3D movies were low quality, frankly,” Acuna says. “4DX probably learned a lesson from that.”

That’s partly because while studios can cheaply convert 2D movies into 3D — and cinemas can do the same with their screens — the same cannot be said about 4DX, which requires fully renovated auditoriums that cost “five to 10 times as much” as a regular screening room. “The scarcity coupled with the quality of the product is what we do to make sure that it always stays relevant,” Acuna says.

As for Cineworld and Regal, Acuna says he’d be “excited to show anything” — including content outside of the Hollywood studio system — as long as CJ is excited to program it.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine a near future in which Hollywood studios begin developing full-length movies with 4DX in mind, similar to how directors like Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve have heavily incorporated Imax into the filmmaking process — and encouraged audiences to seek out premium screens.

“The door’s been opened in terms of these formats being a creative palette for filmmakers,” says Daniel Loria, an analyst at Boxoffice Pro. “It just depends on who wants to jump aboard and how deeply they want to get involved.”

For now, the future of 4DX is wide open, and everybody is looking to cash in on the burgeoning market. As Powell’s hunky “tornado wrangler” chants before rushing into the eye of a new storm: “If you feel it, chase it!”