Jordan and Aaron Kandell are close — even for twins. They shared a room growing up together in Honolulu, graduated from ‘Iolani School together, and were roommates at the University of Southern California, where they studied film and creative writing.

Since then they’ve worked together on feature film and television projects for Walt Disney Animation Studios, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Entertainment and Paramount Pictures.

And, by what they agree is a combination of good luck and timing, their dream homes are next to each other in a quiet Honolulu neighborhood.

On Friday, the 35-year-old brothers — Jordan is officially older by four minutes — will celebrate the theatrical release of their newest film, “Adrift,” starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin. The film, described variously as a survival epic and a romance drama, is based on a true story of a couple who were sailing the open ocean from Tahiti to San Diego in 1983 and got caught by a Category 5 hurricane.

The real-life tale has a tie to Hawaii — the boat ended its harrowing journey in Hilo. It was subsequently sold to a local family and is berthed on Oahu today.

On June 10, they’ll be at Disney’s Aulani resort in Ko Olina for the world premiere screening of Disney’s “Moana” in ‘Olelo Hawai‘i, the first full-length Hollywood film to be translated into the Hawaiian language. The Kandells were members of the writing team that brought the original English- language film version to the screen in 2016.

The brothers talked about their shared career goals and future projects earlier this month.

JOHN BERGER: Having a twin is something most of us can only imagine, so please tell me: Do people relate to you as two individual people or as “the Kandell twins” as a unit?

JORDAN KANDELL: Yes (as a unit), but we are (a unit). We kinda always have been. We describe ourselves as two heads with one body.

AARON KANDELL: We’ve gone from womb-mates to sharing a room our whole lives to roommates in college to next-door neighbors now, as well as writing partners and best friends — like Peter Pan and his shadow. If one …

JK: … gets too far away, the other has to chase him down and stitch him back to our feet.

JB: “A” comes before “J” in the alphabet, but Jordan was born first. How does that work?

AK: We were surprise twins because our parents didn’t know they were having twins. They wanted to do a very natural birth, and so they didn’t do ultrasound, and I was tucked up under my mom’s ribs so my little heartbeat was drowned out by her big heartbeat, and so they only heard one kid’s heartbeat.

JK: Our mom was huge, we were 7-1/2 pound babies, and when natural birth at home didn’t go well, they had to rush her to Queen’s hospital for a C-section.

They pulled me out and then when the doctors were getting ready to sew her up, they said, “Wait! There’s another pair of feet in here,” and they pulled Aaron out.

AK: Four minutes later.

JK: Four minutes later, and it was this surprise twin miracle birth. For the first two weeks we were Baby A and Baby B. Our parents had only picked out my name — not knowing if I was going to be a boy or a girl they picked a name out that worked with either gender.

So our initials — my initials, J.A.K. for Jordan Alexander Kandell, spell out the name of our great-grandfather, and Aaron’s initials, A.O.K. for Aaron Otis Kandell, represent that he came out A-OK.

JB: Hawaii is counting down the days until your next big project, “Adrift,” officially opens on Friday. Where did you find the original story and what drew you to it?

AK: We discovered it five years ago. We were researching an original fictional survival-at-sea story. We have a journalism background so we always like to do deep, extensive research so that there’s an authenticity to our work, whether it’s “Moana” or “Adrift.”

In doing that research we very quickly came upon all these lists of the greatest survival stories ever. The one that jumped out at us — not only because it was the only one that involved a female, but there was also this incredible lush cinematic story at the core it of it — was Tami Oldham Ashcraft’s book, “Red Sky in Mourning.”

JK: So we bought her book that day, read it that night, contacted her the next day and very quickly flew up to meet her. We just knew it was a story we had to tell.

JB: There was a movie a few years ago — “Into the Wild” — that showed a guy with apparently no training or preparation go out into the Alaskan wilderness, get into trouble, and eventually die, because he didn’t know there was a way out less than a mile from where he was.

From what I’ve read, Tami Oldham and Richard Sharp were the exact opposite of the guy in Alaska.

JK: Yes (they were). Richard had built his own boat, he ran a shipyard, he’d gone to the Royal Naval Academy in London. He had salt water in his veins.

AK: He had already sailed halfway around the world just to get to Tahiti from South Africa where he’d built his boat. Prior to that he had years and years — a whole lifetime — of experience. Tami wasn’t as much of a master mariner but she had experience, too.

So these were people who knew what they were doing, who sailed out in what they believed to be a safe season — but you can’t predict Mother Nature.

JB: What would you like people to be thinking when they leave the theater?

JK: Facing the unpredictability of life — the same way as when we drive out to go to work every day. We don’t really know what’s going to happen even if we feel comfortable — and how love can help you overcome any odds.

AK: The thing that touched us when we first found the story was this idea there are movies that are just purely survival stories that are amazing and inspiring, and there are movies that are just pure romance.

For us there was this interesting juxtaposition between the act of falling in love in the most lush cinematic scale of the Society Islands and Tahiti, and how that juxtaposes against these people then having to stay with each other and hold on to each other through the most extreme life-and-death state.

JB: You were brought in as writers to help bring the original English-language release of Disney’s “Moana” to the screen in 2016. What did you bring to it?

JK: We were brought in 2-1/2 years into the five-year process of making that movie. Much like Moana in the middle of her journey, the story had somewhat lost its way and needed a navigator to help steer it to where the story needed to go.

We had a point of view on how to get there. And we also had passion for Polynesian mythology and cultural authenticity while we were trying to steer the story.

JB: I’ve read that you’re working on a feature film on the Massie Case — the alleged rape of Thalia Massie, the wife of a naval officer, in 1931, and the murder of Joe Kahahawai, one of the five “local men” who had been accused of raping her. What can you tell me about it?

JK: We’re producing a film that a local screenwriter, Chris Bright, who’s a Kamehameha graduate, wrote. It’s an amazing script about one of the most incredible, still-relevant true stories in Hawaiian history.

We’re in the process of putting the movie together now.

JB: What else are you working on that you can tell me about?

AK: We’re currently writing a Netflix original feature comedy which is staring Luke Evans, Josh Gad (and) Daisy Ridley. It’s called “Super Normal,” and it’s a twist on the superhero genre. What happens when the world’s greatest superhero accidentally transfers his power into the world’s least likely normal guy.

Luke Evans will be the superhero and Josh Gads would be the normal guy, and the surprise villain is Luke’s younger sister, Daisy.

JK: You can also say that we’re also working on a live-action Disney movie.

“On the Scene” appears on Sundays in the Star-Advertiser. Reach John Berger at jberger@staradvertiser.com.