On July 14, Universal Pictures’ marketing team was entering the final stretch of its campaign for summer hit “Twisters” — and then it captured lightning in a bottle.
Amid a grueling day of back-to-back interviews, Daisy Edgar-Jones, who plays the film’s heroine, grabbed her co-stars Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos and taught them the Charli XCX “Apple” dance. Sensing that something special was unfolding, the actress summoned a cameraman to record the action and uploaded a clip to her Instagram account. The trio’s dance on the Burbank lot went viral. Edgar-Jones’ post garnered nearly 10 million views, while Ramos’ TikTok version topped 18 million. Even the “Apple” singer, who is unaffiliated with the movie, reposted the “Twisters” stars’ moves. Unlike most marketing endeavors, this one wasn’t concocted by a team of studio executives. It was one of many “Twisters” moments devised by the lead actress alone.
VFX Working Conditions Need to Change, but Current Unionization Option May Not Be the Answer
Vince Vaughn Fast Talks His Way Through Florida Murder Case in First Trailer for Apple TV+ Series 'Bad Monkey'
“She just had an unerring sense of what it takes to connect with an audience without it ever feeling performative or inauthentic,” says Universal chief marketing officer Michael Moses. “There is a reluctance to do the heavy lifting that it takes to promote nowadays. So it was really refreshing to have someone like Daisy come in and not have to convince her.”
In fact, Edgar-Jones, who received top billing, did plenty of heavy lifting, given that Powell was in South Africa filming the A24 black comedy “Huntington” until two weeks before the tentpole’s July 19 release. The 26-year-old Brit toured cities across the country, from Dallas to Miami, doing regular-person stuff like cowboy-boot shopping and getting her hands sticky at a barbecue joint. Even after Powell joined the fray, she continued to embrace her role in selling the film, memorably shotgunning beers with Luke Combs and Powell onstage during a New Jersey concert.
“So many are like, ‘No, I’m a movie star. I don’t chug a beer,” Moses says. “I think it really was a lot of the off-interview things that made all the difference.”
There’s little doubt from Universal’s perspective that Edgar-Jones’ approach filled seats at the multiplex, helping propel the film to a massive $81 million opening in the U.S. and Canada — the highest domestic debut ever in the natural disaster subgenre. The movie, which follows a meteorologist (Edgar-Jones) and a famed storm chaser (Powell) as they try to outlast a series of killer tornadoes, has whipped up $274 million worldwide to date.
As a result, Edgar-Jones has become the season’s breakout and now joins Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney in a tiny pool of 20-something actresses on which the major studios will bet. The three, who represent a next-gen model of TV stars breaking into movies and harnessing their social media cachet, have each starred in at least two films that have crossed the $100 million mark. Even more enticing to studio executives, Edgar-Jones harks back to the classic ’90s female movie star — accessible and aspirational, in the vein of Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock, who signaled to audiences that being a Hollywood A-lister was fun rather than a burden.
Before “Twisters,” the UTA-repped actress boasted an impressive track record: She toplined Sony’s 2022 murder mystery “Where the Crawdads Sing,” which earned $144 million worldwide in a year still recovering from COVID, as well as the 12-epidose “Normal People” for Hulu and BBC Three, which became the latter’s most streamed series of 2020 with a whopping 62.7 million views.
When it came time to cast the “Twisters” protagonist, Edgar-Jones was already on director Lee Isaac Chung’s radar. Then he received an unsolicited letter from her.
“I thought, ‘Wow. This is so well thought out and so eloquent,’ and that was striking to me,” Chung recalls. “We met up after that, took a couple of very long walks along the Los Angeles River and just talked about the script. There was never an audition. Steven Spielberg was also a fan of Daisy’s. once he found out that I was talking to Daisy about [the role], he was very supportive, as was Universal. And that really tipped the scales.”
She quickly won over the marketing divisions of not one but two studios. (Universal spearheaded the domestic release; Warner Bros. oversaw the international rollout.) Long before the promotional push for “Twisters” began, Edgar-Jones met with the “Barbenheimer” marketing brain trust (separately, of course) and took notes as if preparing for a final exam. “She was by herself and just sat down with her notebook and a real open curiosity and intention about how to approach a big summer blockbuster,” says Moses. “And that’s pretty unique in my experience.”
She upped her social media game significantly and now has 2.3 million Instagram followers. But social media numbers only go so far. Take Selena Gomez, who is the reigning queen with 426 million Instagram followers. Yet her 2019 zombie satire “The Dead Don’t Die” earned just $15.3 million despite opening Cannes that year. But Edgar-Jones’ social strategy on “Twisters” took promotion to the next level, leaning heavily into TikTok-friendly clips.
As for what’s next, sources close to the actress say she is fielding a slew of scripts, from rom-coms to erotic thrillers, the latter seen as a welcome ’90s throwback. And a “Twisters” sequel is a no-brainer, though no formal talks have begun.
Chung, for one, would like to see Edgar-Jones show off a lighter side, something that her followers have witnessed.
“She’s a very good physical comedian,” he notes. “She was incredibly funny on set. And if she ever did a role like that, she would be hilarious.”
And if she follows the trajectory of Roberts, Bullock or even a Meg Ryan, she could make movies that are hilarious — and wildly profitable.
