RolandEmmerich Tagged Articles at Cinematical

At a press junket earlier this summer for 2012, Roland Emmerich told reporters he's not doing any more blow-'em-up flicks. "I would not know how to top this... It's just one of these things, you know. I had a hard time deciding to do another disaster movie, but... you cannot make a disaster movie if there's not something --- an idea in this disaster which elevates it to something more than a disaster. And so it was this idea, you know, that there will be a global flood and it's a retelling of Noah's Arc."

Later he added, "It's not my last film, it's my last disaster film. And that's because I wouldn't know what else to do. It's just, you know what, I really didn't want to do this movie at first... But when I decided that the idea was too good to not do it for the reason I had done before, I said, okay, if I do it, I will do it in such a spectacular manner that nobody can top it for a long time. I have that pride in my work."

Watching the trailer for 2012 I couldn't help but get the feeling that Roland Emmerich was trying to tell me something. There was a lot of camera shaking and screaming and really big objects rolling over, but I think it was seeing the entire state of California lift into the air like the climax of Titanic before sinking into the depths of the Pacific ocean: Roland Emmerich hates civilization. Sure, 2012 is bound to be full of roaring musical cues that signal the triumphant survival of a tiny, tiny percentage of people on Earth, but I think it's pretty clear that his movie is going to literally rip our world apart at the seams.

But apparently that's not all that big of a deal, because Emmerich has revealed to Entertainment Weekly that a sequel to 2012 is already being plotted. Yes, a sequel to the end of the world; kind of redefines the whole 'end' part of his film's synopsis. Tentatively titled 2013, he tells EW that the follow up to his story won't be a film, but rather a television show:

"It is about the resettling of Earth. That is very, very fascinating. (2012 writer/producer) Harald Kloser and I came up with the idea and we have the luxury of having a producer on the film who is a big TV producer, Mark Gordon. We said to Mark, 'Why don't you do a TV show that picks up where the movie leaves off and call it 2013?' I think it will focus on a group of people who survived but not on the boats ... maybe they were on a piece of land that was spared or one that became an island in the process of the crust moving. There are so many possibilities of what they could do and I'd be excited to watch it."

We've already explored the history of 2012 here on Cinematical and what you need to know to see the movie (hint: the world might blow up!), but here's what 2012 stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, and Woody Harrelson and director Roland Emmerich have to say about the end of the world. Do they believe the world will end with a whimper or a bang, T. S. Eliot-style? Will we go out in fire or in ice? Do they even believe the world will end in 2012? Let's find out.

Roland Emmerich: It's always great if you find some sort of belief people have and put it in your movies, as fantastic as they may be. For example, Independence Day, I used Area 51 and centered my whole story around Area 51 because I found out in my research that people really believed in it. And in this movie, as we discovered the phenomenon of 2012, because some culture, the Mayas, gave the end of the world a date. An exact date. The 21st of December, 2012. And that's just so incredible and so interesting that a lot of people are fascinated by it and there's believers; there's people like you [who] just find it fascinating. I hope it will not happen. But when you research it a little bit deeper, you kind of find a lot of other cultures [that] believe the same thing. They only don't put an exact date to it, but they have other predictions which all point to 2012. It's quite eerie...

Given the topic at hand, I'd like to make it clear up front that neither I nor Cinematical are taking sides in this story about Roland Emmerich's forthcoming All Landmarks Must Die opus, 2012; I just find it a curious insight into the mind of the man who knows how to make a building fall over but good.

The trailer for 2012 plays like a highlight reel of civilization falling apart all over the world, but it's religion that gets the brunt of Emmerich's digital pounding: A Buddhist temple gets hit by a tidal wave. The Sistine Chapel crumbles to pieces as a split tears right down the middle of Michelangeo's painting of God touching Adam's finger. St. Peter's Basilica rolls over onto a crowd of devoted worshipers. Rio de Janeiro's iconic Christ the Reedemer statue falls to earth as its wracked by shockwaves. The White House is even crushed by, of all things, an aircraft carrier. But eagle eyed fans of watching organized religion get its disaster porn comeuppance will have noticed that there are no Islamic landmarks on the CGI chopping block.

That wasn't always the plan, however. Emmerich explained to SCI FI Wire that he had originally hoped the Kaaba, one of the holiest sites in the Islamic religion, would join the visual wrath of 2012, but that his co-screenwriter Harald Kloser talked him out of it:

A good villain is memorable, and impressive, and scary as hell. But bring back the same villain over and over, give him lousy dialogue and have him repeatedly defeated by worthless opponents, and that villain becomes nothing more than an ineffectual bully who doesn't know when to give up. He's like that big, hairy guy down the street who scared the crap out of you when you were a kid, but who now has a pot belly, three obnoxious kids, and a Trans Am on blocks in his front yard. It makes it hard to remember why you ever found him frightening in the first place -- you'd feel sorry for him, but you just don't care enough to bother. Like these five:

Dr. Evil
Remember how cool Dr. Evil was in the first Austin Powers movie? Very few villains have fallen as far or as fast as Mike Myers' homage to Bondian baddies. Sure, he was a little out of touch with the current global economy, and his relationship with his son, Scott, was a tad strained, but he had a super-cool secret lair inside a volcano island, and a spaceship, and a clone sidekick, and lasers. Despite his flaws, Dr. Evil had all the earmarks of a world-class villain.

But by Myers' third, tired outing, Dr. Evil (along with every other joke in Myers' playbook) was used up -- so much so, that Myers brought in yet another villain, Goldmember, and he played that guy, too. It takes a lot of talent to stretch yourself that thin and get away with it -- I mean, sure, Alec Guinness played eight characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets, but he's freakin' Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Force is considerably weaker in Myers, and maybe if he'd been happy playing a few less characters, he'd have been able to come up with a better script ... one that didn't require the once-impressive Dr. Evil to spell his name "D to the rizzo, E to the vizzo, I to the lizzo." Bleh.

Perhaps you've seen the ominous ads for Roland Emmerich's latest disaster film, 2012. Here you can see just one example of Sony's viral campaign, which I spotted outside of my apartment building a few months ago. The Mayans warned us? Why is the URL at the bottom ThisIsTheEnd.com? Enter that into your browser, and you'll find a site "run" by one of the characters in the movie who believe the world will end in 2012, which is just what seems to be happening in Emmerich's upcoming blow-'em'-up. (Incidentally, the website looks pretty much like lots of the real 2012 websites and books out there.)

But what is 2012? Why do people – lots of people, in fact – think the world is going to end on December 21, 2012? It's a fairly popular conspiracy theory, as these things go, right up there with Nostradamus. (And definitely more popular than the guy who believes the world is run by lizard people.) Back it up and let's take an all-too-brief look at the Mayan civilization and religion and why the date 12/21/2012 has got some people nervous.

Who Were the Mayans?

The Mayans were a technologically advanced Mesoamerican culture that lived in the Yucatan Peninsula and parts of Central America. The Mayans truly flourished in the Classic period, which was around 600 years between AD 300 to AD 900. During that time, the Mayans developed a more complex social order, as well as city-states with prosperous trade. There were also plenty of impressive palaces, pyramids, and ceremonial structures, but perhaps the most significant aspect of the Mayan civilization is their discoveries about science and astronomy, which led them to develop a sophisticated series of calendars. One of those calendars just so happens to end on December 21, 2012.

Though no one asked for a sequel to Independence Day (because didn't Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum use a computer virus to rid us of those damn aliens the last time?), that's not stopping special effects superhero Roland Emmerich from wanting to churn one out for the hell of it. Only problem is ... it's going to take a lot more than an arm and a leg to get Will Smith back in an alien fighting mood.

While speaking to Emmerich about 2012, Latino Review learned that there's a script and a story for Independence Day 2, but right now 20th Century Fox is delaying it because they can't come to terms with Emmerich, writer-producer Dean Devlin and Will Smith -- all of whom want to make sure they're paid, like, a trillion dollars for this thing. According to Emmerich, Fox wanted them to make the sequel without Will Smith, but the writer-director insists he star in it. "I said Will is essential for us, for this movie and actually for the audience too. And, so, it's in limbo and lately the studios are fighting. Like gross players, and Will is a gross player and is probably the only gross player right now who's worth his gross. So we'll see what happens. I would love to do it," Emmerich noted.

Read the rest over at SciFi Squad

Ever flip through the channels during a commercial break only to find the same commercial on another network? It may seem like a coincidence, but it's actually called roadblock advertising. And I hope you're looking forward to Roland Emmerich's upcoming disaster-porn 2012, because Sony is throwing millions of dollars at all of the major networks in an attempt to be damn sure you see 2 minutes of the film on October 1st.

According to Variety, Sony's diabolical stunt plan is to have "the footage in front of 90% of all households watching ad-supported TV, or nearly 110 million viewers. When combined with online and mobile streams, that could increase to more than 140 million".

If that's not enough of an overdose on the Mayan-predicted-apocalypse loving film before it even opens this November 13th, Variety further explains that Comcast is actually going to be running a hype campaign announcing the roadblock campaign: "Comcast will launch a multi-million dollar promotional campaign on its cable networks and online to hype the roadblock, which will air on ABC, NBC and CBS, 89 cable networks, local stations in the top 70 markets, and Spanish-language networks throughout the U.S. between 10:50 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. on the West and East coasts, with the hours varying across the rest of the country."

Saturday was another busy day at Comic Con, and two of the movies a lot of folks were chatting up on Twitter and around the convention floor were Zombieland and 2012. Zombieland, of course, is that awesome-looking zombie comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin and Woody Harrelson. We already shared a report from the set with you (read that over at Horror Squad), but only at Con did Cinematical's Kevin Kelly have a chance to chat up the film's director, Ruben Fleischer, along with its star Jesse Eisenberg. Zombieland hits theaters on October 9. Watch both of those videos after the jump.

Meanwhile, Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) is back to destroy the world with epic amounts of special effects in his new movie 2012. Starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Amanda Peet, and Thandie Newton, word is this flick will be the mother of all disaster movies -- and while Emmerich has made a name for himself destroying cities using a number of creative ways, this movie looks to take that up a notch and then some. 2012 hits theaters on November 13. Check out what Emmerich had to say to Kevin Kelly about 2012 (he calls this his "flood movie") and the end of the world after the jump.

We go through a lot of trailer mash-ups here at Cinematical, but this one -- which spoofs the upcoming disaster flick from Roland Emmerich, 2012, is just completely awesome in every way. And I don't mean that as a knock against the film so much because I haven't seen it yet, but I completely agree with Drew at Hit Fix when he says that this trailer alone could make the film a whole bucket full of extra cash at the box office if the studio embraced it, which they won't because, well, they won't. Emmerich makes serious, thought-provoking (and entertaining) disaster movies (or so he thinks) -- meanwhile, admit it, you just want to see sh*t blown up. New York City destroyed and under water? Yes! Bring it! Kill everyone!

In case you're curious (and I know you will be), the music is "Okay Dokey" and "Bongolia" by the Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band. Love it! Watch it after the jump ...