Thunder and Hurricane: Pre-Production

The idea for THUNDER AND HURRICANE began to develop when writer/director Steven R. Hoover was in high school. He and several friends, including co-producer Danny Tanner, were involved with film and video projects for their school's closed-circuit television studio. One day, the group of friends gathered together and filmed a short about a few guys who thought they were superheroes. Hoover decided that one day, he wanted to do a feature length film loosely based on that concept. In February 2003, nearly ten years later, he decided it was time.

Despite the lack of formal training and experience, Hoover began scripting the adventures of two simple-minded cousins at his home computer. According to Hoover, "I didn't worry whether or not it was formatted correctly to industry terms. I just tried to write a story that was funny, made some sense, and had a beginning, middle, and end." Because of the limited budget that Hoover knew he would have during production, one of the main hurdles in writing the screenplay was writing it in such a way that Hoover knew it could be filmed. Sometimes, this meant altering the story so the characters would wind up in a location that would be easy to film as opposed to one that would have been difficult or too costly to acquire.

After six months of writing, Hoover thought he had a workable script and presented it to co-producer, Danny Tanner. The two began scouting out locations in York and Adams County in Pennsylvania. After securing the majority of the locations, a local theater in Hanover, PA was reserved for auditions. Two rounds of auditions followed, with over one hundred responding to the open audition call that ran in the local newspaper. Hoover and Tanner, along with their wives, Audra and Lorrie, sorted through applications, reviewed footage from auditions, and together chose the final cast. Three weeks later, a cast of approximately thirty and a crew of four were signed on and ready to begin.