Storm Outbreak (film)

Dhar Mann’s Storm Outbreak (sysled as S-T-O-R-M O-U-T-B-R-E-A-K or known as just Storm Outbreak) is an 2024 American epic action drama disaster film directed by Dhar Mann, with Troy Whitaker as the co-director from a screenplay made by Dhar Mann (idea) and Gerald R. (writer). It stars Jovanna Vidal, Elizabeth Lamboy-Wilson, Sofia Chicorelli Serna, Vinn Sander, Katherine Norland, Angelee Vera, Nick Sarando, Mair Mulroney and Colin A. Borden. The film takes place in Oklahoma City where we are introduced to a young teenager named Emma who wants to storm chase with her dad, David. A couple of weeks later, a severe outbreak of tornadoes occurred which Emma, her dad, and her 4 friends, Liam, Noah, Oliver and James decided to chase the storm. However, it goes very bad as one of the EF5 tornadoes ends up striking the TIV, sending everyone, except for Emma flying and falling to their death. All alone, she finds some adults who help her recover from her injuries.

1 year after the release and critical failure of Girl Finds Out She's Adopted and during production of Lost and Found (2023), A film based on tornadoes was announced first in November 2022 during Dhar Mann’s 3rd Thanksgiving Special, which had a working title, titled as Severe Outbreak and was stated to be in active development with Dhar Mann becoming the director. The film had to go through some minor to major rewrites due to issues with the plot during pre-production with the final script being finished by May of 2023. By July 2023, the Principal photography for the film began in Oklahoma. In August of 2023, The film was officially titled as Storm Outbreak, along with the first screenshot of the film which leaked online by someone who was working on the project, as it shows actor, Sofia Chicorelli Serna as the main character/Emma; This led to few criticism from fans who stated that it would been easy if they had choose a another different girl actor as she was in too much films, however, Sofia ended up continuing the role of Emma. On March, 4th 2024, the release date of the film was revealed with the film releasing in theaters on November, 21th 2024.

Before the film’s release in September 2024, the title was changed from Storm Outbreak to DHAR MANN’S Storm Outbreak; This change once again got huge criticism from reviewers and fans with many questions stating why they changed the title, but there were no answers at all. The film had a world premiere on November, 3th 2024 and was released worldwide on November, 21th 2024 to largely positive reviews from critics, especially the fans and reviewers in which they praised the screenplay, special effects, acting, editing, pacing and action and was a huge success at the box office than before, getting $437 million dollars at the initial box office and a re-release on July 11th 2025 made the film getting a total of $461 million dollars. Along with Lost and Found in 2023, it became one of Dhar Mann’s greatest films of all time.

Script and development
Back in 2021 before the release of Girl Finds Out She's Adopted, Dhar Mann alone from September to November wrote a 65-page film treatment about tornadoes, in which the story according to writer, Gerald.R, was “mainly about a small girl named Anna living in a small town with dreams about chasing tornadoes with her 59 years old father named, David and 2 annoying sisters, Elsa and Oliver. When her dad died after getting struck by a wedge-sized tornado a couple of years later, Anna and her sisters decided to go storm chasing without any help or learning skill”. But once he showed the script to the crew of Dhar Mann Studios, they despised it a lot and the project ended up getting removed from going far into development. The project about tornadoes was totally abandoned until in June 2022, when writer Troy Whitaker wrote a 135-page film treatment, this time focusing not only on chasing tornadoes, but more on drama. Once after Troy showed the script to the crew and Dhar Mann, they ended up liking the idea and the film about tornadoes was revised and was put in development. However, they said there was a bit of a problem with the script, so they asked to make some minor rewrites to fix the problem. Dhar Mann was brought back to help, along with Gerald. R suggesting some ideas for the screenplay. In the process of rewriting the script, they ended up removing and adding: removing Anna’s 2 annoying sisters (Elsa and Oliver), giving a new name for Emma’s Father: now as Jake, changing the settings from a small town to a big town, named Greenville (which did not make it into the final film), made Emma a 15/16 years old girl instead of a small kid and finally her a brand new name as Emma. In September 2022, One of the writers working on the screenplay said that around 70% - 80% percent of the script was completed.

By October 2022, the script was about 85% complete and was set to be finished sometime at the start or in mid-November. Dhar Mann said that, “When writing the new script for the film, Me and the crew had a tough time, a very tough time with the setting, especially on what the plot will focus on. We have to  rewrite a lot or even almost the entire screenplay from the beginning, it was a mess ....” On November, 15th 2022, the script was finalized and the film was set to be announced at Dhar Mann’s 3rd Annual Thanking Special. At the same time, story artist, Michelee Do and 10 more were drawing some concept art of what the film could be like. According to Michellee Do, the artworks were meant to draw it as realistic as possible, this of course, made it a bit tough for the artist;the crew drew for hours every day, with some even working too hard, but thankfully, the concept art was made on time. On November, 22th 2022, a day before the premiere of the 2nd Christmas Special. The artworks of the initial film was shown at Dhar Mann Studios in which Dhar Mann ended up lauding the concept art, calling it a true masterpiece and planned to show the 3 most realistic arts at the Christmas premiere in December.

On November, 23th 2022, The film was announced as the title, Severe Outbreak with Dhar Mann stating to their fans that the film was in active development by the crew who previously worked on Girl Finds Out She’s Adopted, but was not green-lit yet. A month later, it was revealed that pre-production of the film is underway. On December, 1th 2022, Writer Matthew Paul joined the team who was rewriting a bit of the story to help out with some of its issues. Matthew Paul said

that there was an issue with the beginning of the story in which it shows that Emma in the script was meant to have a bad dream, in that dream, It shows Emma getting sucked up by a tornado with her dad, then waking up screaming like a baby. So, the beginning was changed from the bad dream scene, to the scene where she was a small child, looking out the windows, thinking and dreaming of chasing powerful tornadoes. By December, 15th 2022, The beginning was finally fixed by the crew and was set to be explained by Dhar Mann at the premiere of Dhar Mann’s 2nd Christmas Special. Concept arts on the film began on December, 1th 2022, a week and a half before the script was finished. It was tough as most of the artworks were super realistic; some of the artists were reported to be working way too hard, and few even decided to stay up the whole night. On December, 24th 2022, the concept arts were revealed to massive praise.

Pre-production
With the announcement of Severe Outbreak (working title), pre-production on the film began. Dhar Mann had to bring in and work with a handful of designers, even Ralph Lauren to help design with the tornado, storm, hail and rain. The toughest one to create and design were the tornado, as they were designed in different sizes and shapes. Dhar Mann himself explained that the reasons why the tornadoes were the toughest to design was because of their shape. “We had to work and work and work with many different designers to help us with the tornadoes, but it was so tough, and I mean, very tough” -Dhar Mann. In January of 2023, one designer showed a sneak peek on what the design looked like, showing on a computer; a collection of a lot of different tornadoes.

Criticisms and rewrites
In March of 2023, the first shareholder meeting occurred at Dhar Mann Studios which was live-streamed on the official Dhar Mann Youtube channel. That is where the plot of the film was revealed. “About the film, Severe Outbreak, it is an upcoming film that we are working on right now. The story for the movie starts with a 4, 5 or 6 year-old kid named Emma, who dreamed about chasing storms. When she gets older and her father passes away after chasing a tornado, she and her 3 or 4 friends go on an epic adventure without learning anything at all. So, that is the plot of the film”. This draws some criticisms from reviewers, with many criticizing its story as a mess, along with the settings of the film as it was to many, a total disaster than a mess.

Critics panned it writing, stating that the plot was very confusing and the fact that Emma drove a car or TIV1 or 2 without knowing how to was very bad. Some fans of Dhar Mann didn’t like the main character’s name as Emma, along with killing the dad immediately in the film. In response to the criticisms, Dhar Mann announced that they will rewrite the script for at least a final time. In April, Rewriting on the film began with Gerald. R once again suggested some ideas for the movie in which they were a bit different, but perfect. On June 22, 2023, the script was at last completed.

Filming
With the script finally completed in June 2023, Production and filming on the film began. Filming begins in the West in July, North in September and the Southside of Oklahoma City in November, lasting for 4 months total. The production numbers were; Outbreak, Death and Argument Scene.

Music
Alex Paul was announced as the composer for the film on February 1, 2023; by then, he was already working on the soundtrack with a couple of demo songs completed. At Dhar Mann’s First Shareholder meeting in which it was live-streamed, Alex played a song from the film, called In the Middle of the River and If I Never Seen You [was in the demo stage at the time] with concept arts being shown on a big screen every 10 seconds; Both songs got mixed reactions from reviewers at the time, but was praised as decent by fans of Dhar Mann. In May of 2023, Almost half of the songs were near the end of the demo stages, but some songs were planned.

* This is the soundtrack of the film, released on November 1, 2024