Filmmaker Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla, The Patriot) is taking on the Mayan prediction about the end of the world with his new movie 2012, due out in June 2009.

The Mayan “long count” calendar ends in 2012, and some nutballs New Age theorists believe that this signals a global cataclysm. The movie apparently begins with the world getting a good CGI smackdown, so I’m not actually sure how the rest of the film plans to top that.

John Cusack is in negotiations to play an academic researcher who “opens a portal into a parallel universe and makes contact with his double” in order to prevent the apocalypse. Which seems plausible enough; ever since the Y2K thing, “Opening a Portal into a Parallel Universe and Making Contact with Your Double” is a graduate-level course at most universities.

Link (via Forever Geek)