At this point I'm starting to think that Roland Emmerich must be in possession of some pretty serious blackmail material, because there is no other explanation why accomplished actors are so ready and willing to star in his films. MTV now reports that Woody Harrelson has joined the cast of Emmerich's end of the world thriller, 2012.

The story is based on an ancient Mayan prophecy about the end of the world, but Emmerich's film is no ode to Apocalypto. Instead, John Cusack stars as an academic who opens up a portal to a parallel dimension (don't you hate it when that happens?) in an attempt to contact his double and prevent the apocalyptic prophecy from happening. Harrelson will play what he calls a "modern day Cassandra" who has seen the writing on the wall and has been predicting the disaster for years.

According to Harrelson, he will "play a guy who's been talking for a long time, the whole world thinks he's crazy. But he's been talking that there's gonna be hell to pay for what's been going on ecologically and everything." Perhaps this is Emmerich's idea of a little in-joke considering Harrelson's activist leanings. In the meantime, fans of Harrelson's work will probably prefer his upcoming thriller, Transsiberian. But who am I to judge? I guess sometimes a pay check can be its own reward.

2012 is scheduled to begin filming on location in Vancouver and is slated for release in July, 2009.

When is the news of an actor you really like joining the cast of a high-profile new movie bad news? When you wish that actor were doing other things with his time, that's when. In the case of Thomas McCarthy -- whom you may remember from his masterfully detestable performance as weaselly reporter Scott Templeton in the final season of The Wire -- I wish he were writing and directing another film as brilliant and deeply moving as The Visitor, which at this halfway point is my favorite movie of 2008. I'd even settle for something with the wry, quiet charm of his lovely 2003 debut The Station Agent.

Instead -- ::sigh:: -- he's gone and taken a supporting role in Roland Emmerich's disaster flick 2012, playing Amanda Peet's boyfriend. C'mon, Tom: anyone can do that. Only a handful of people have your behind-the-camera chops. Quit messing around.

I'm being mean, and in this Hollywood Reporter piece McCarthy makes a valiant effort at defending the choice in terms of how working with directors who make different kinds of films helps him with his own work. (The article also mentions that McCarthy moonlights as an uncredited studio script doctor, which I didn't know, and which makes perfect sense given the natural, effortless flow of the films he's written.) Okay fine. But direct something else please.

I was trying to think back to when Amanda Peet had her last high-profile starring role, and I realized: she doesn't do them very often. It's surprising, because she seems so ubiquitous, but it's true -- outside of tiny projects like Nigel Cole's A Lot Like Love, she's mostly done lots and lots of (often significant) supporting parts. She's making a somewhat dubious attempt to remedy that by taking the female lead role opposite John Cusack in Roland Emmerich's sci-fi epic 2012. Peet and Cusack will head a cast that includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover (as the President) and Oliver Platt.

2012, which was written by Emmerich with his 10,000 BC writing partner (and, uh, composer) Harald Kloser, posits that the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 will herald the end of the world. Cusack's character must open a portal into a parallel universe and enlist his double in the struggle to prevent said apocalypse. The concept is right up my alley, but Emmerich's films -- especially his and Kloser's 10,000 BC -- are not. On the other hand, the two leads are immensely likable, and John Cusack rarely signs on for a genuine stinker, so we'll see.

The movie is scheduled for a July 10, 2009 release barring an actor's strike. Peet, of course, will also appear in a (surprise!) supporting role in this year's The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

Considering the critical reception that a Roland Emmerich film usually receives, I am always a little surprised by the actors who are willing to sign on for one of his films. Although to be fair, it wouldn't be the first time that John Cusack had signed on the dotted line for a less-than-stellar project. The Hollywood Reporter has now announced that Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, and Oliver Platt are all in talks to join Cusack in Emmerich's apocalyptic thriller, 2012. According to THR, "Glover is in talks to play the President, with Newton in discussions to play his daughter. Platt is in negotiations to play the president's chief of staff."

Thanks to Erik, we now have a few more details about the story, and that it centers on an academic researcher (Cusack) who "opens a portal into a parallel universe and makes contact with his double in order to prevent an apocalypse predicted by the ancient Mayans." Emmerich co-wrote the script with fellow 10,000 B.C. scribe, Harald Kloser -- which is probably not a great selling point for most audiences. Columbia has projected a budget of $200 million for the end-of-the-world flick -- I guess all that destruction doesn't come cheap. But, Columbia has also stated that they're hoping to bring the thriller in under budget. Emmerich has promised to start production by July, barring any hiccups from a possible SAG strike.

2012 is scheduled to arrive in theaters on July 10, 2009.

Well it looks like Roland Emmerich has opted to go back to a few more familiar faces for his next monster, effects-laced epic. Variety tells us John Cusack has signed to star in 2012 for Columbia Pictures, with Redbelt's Chiwetel Ejiofor in negotiations to co-star. Emmerich and Harold Kloser wrote the screenplay for this apocalyptic tale which follows an academic researcher (Cusack) who "opens a portal into a parallel universe and makes contact with his double in order to prevent an apocalypse predicted by the ancient Mayans." WTF? Really? Sounds to me like a pretty ridiculous premise, but it's a Roland Emmerich film -- so as long as he blows up New York City halfway through, we're all good.

I am interested to see how they're going to make this whole "contacting yourself in an alternate universe" thing work. Do you look exactly the same? Like, in an alternate universe, would I look like myself or actually be skinny and good looking? I need to know these rules now before 2012 heads into production this July (barring a SAG strike, of course). And how do you find yourself in an alternate universe? Instead of Google, would there be Boogle? My mind is blown! [Holds fist in air] Emmerich!

Maybe the most irritating thing about Roland Emmerich's generally unwatchable 10,000 BC was leading man Steven Strait's bizarre accent. Totally indeterminate -- he trilled his r's and drawled occasionally -- it was clearly meant to indicate in some uncertain way that what we're watching takes place a Very Long Time Ago. Hello? The movie is called 10,000 BC and the characters are already speaking English. Making them speak weird English isn't exactly adding verisimilitude. I don't know who Emmerich thought he was fooling.

I always find this sort of thing annoying, and sometimes vaguely insulting. I'm perfectly fine with characters who speak English even though they're not supposed to -- it's easier that way, and I can suspend disbelief. But if you're going to go that route, why add constant, pointless reminders of the very fact you're trying to dodge? Part of the reason I admire The Hunt for Red October is that John McTiernan said "screw it" and let Sean Connery keep his Scottish brogue as a Soviet submarine captain.*

Hopefully Sean O'Keefe and Will Staples are going to have a little more luck getting their new script into production than they have in the past. Variety reports that the duo has sold a pitch to Universal for a political action thriller. The yet to be titled flick would center on "an elite team that secretly journeys to a foreign country to take down an international criminal. When the mission is compromised, the team suddenly finds itself on the run, desperate to uncover the truth behind a major conspiracy."

O'Keefe and Staples are relatively new to the screen writing game. Back in 2006, the two had been tapped to write a feature version of the graffiti video game Getting Up. Considering O'Keefe's experience with writing video games, this would have been a perfect fit. Unfortunately, Getting Up hasn't been heard from since -- which is probably for the best. The duo's bad luck continued when they were hired to write Renny Harlin's The Northmen and Roland Emmerich's The Murder of King Tut, and both of those films have yet to materialize. In fact, the projects seemed to have disappeared altogether. So for O'Keefe and Staples' sake, I hope that this time Universal lets these two make an honest to goodness movie. If not, I guess they can always go back to video games.

Directed and co-written by Roland Emmerich, who's previously given us Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 B.C. offers audiences the prospect of epic action on a canvas as broad as human history; what it delivers is another matter entirely. In an age where computer-generated effects make spectacle possible, and audiences reward blood-and-thunder films like Gladiator and 300 at the box office, greenlighting 10,000 B.C. must have seemed logical. I can imagine someone pitching the film, to paraphrase Team America: World Police, by saying "It's like 300 .... plus 9,700!"

But as Emmerich's films have always demonstrated, suggesting that spectacle can make up for weak storytelling is like suggesting that having a great haircut can make up for being born without a skeleton. And, so it is in 10,000 B.C., where a variety of off-the-rack plot points and generic heroic journeys are decorated with computer-generated baubles like wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers and massed mobs, shiny hollow Christmas ornaments hung on a bare, ruined tree. Emmerich co-wrote 10,000 B.C. with Harald Klosser and put an army of technicians to work on the movie, but the end result simply feels like threads and themes and moments borrowed from other films.

Only one short day ago, talk surfaced of a bidding war that was taking place over Roland Emmerich's latest flick, 2012. Emmerich had presented the flick to various studio bosses and let's just say they liked what they saw. Cut to one day later and Variety reports that Sony has emerged victorious, and they are now the proud new owners of Emmerich's apocalyptic flick.

2012 was inspired by the Mayan doomsday prophecy that some unspecified 'change' was afoot and as a result, the world would come to an end in 2012. Emmerich wasn't the first person to come up with the idea of making a movie out of this story. Michael Bay had also made some moves towards his own flick based on a book by Communion scribe, Whitley Strieber. Heck, even Nickelodeon got in on the action and pitched a kiddie version of the end of the world story. But we haven't heard a peep out of those projects, so it looks like Emmerich's film might be the only one left standing, especially since Bay is hard at work on Transformers 2.

So despite what you might think of some of his earlier endeavors, Emmerich does have the distinction of being one of the few filmmakers that can finance a film on his own terms before even approaching the studios. This is probably what makes him so very popular with the bosses. 2012 is still a long way off (it will hit during the summer of 2009), so if you can't wait to watch Emmerich blow something up, at least you can look forward to March 7th when 10,000 B.C hits theaters.

I don't want to be mean, but if Roland Emmerich wants to keep the buzz going on his sci-fl flick 2012, he'll be lucky if he gets to make a deal before the advance reviews for 10,000 B.C. start flooding in. Variety reports that the "doomsday" director has started a bidding war for his next project; the apocalyptic adventure flick 2012. The film will be based on the Mayan doomsday prediction that the world is set to end in 2012.

The whole 'end of the world' thing seems as popular as ever; Nickelodeon is even toying with the idea of a kid's flick that uses that same premise (c'mon kids, let's head to movies and watch civilization become extinct!) Last spring, Michael Bay had also considered directing a film based on the book, 2012: The War for Souls by Whitley Streiber for Warner Bros. Emmerich's project, however similar it might seem, will not be using Streiber's book. Instead, his spec script was written in collaboration with Harald Kloser, who also worked with Emmerich on B.C.

According to Variety's sources, "Studio toppers read the script Tuesday, and indications are that nearly all of them were interested enough to meet with Emmerich and reps Wednesday to hear his budget projection and creative aspirations." Of course, you can't help but wonder if the studios desperation for new projects in the wake of the writer's strike might be the source of their enthusiasm. Well that, and the fact that like it or not, Emmerich seems to be able to rake in the box office. Never underestimate the power of a good opening weekend, I guess.

How do you think Emmerich will destroy New York City in this one?