Small BusinessHimalayas inspired '2012'
When director Roland Emerich was looking for a image that would sum up the apocalyptic tone of his blockbuster 2012, he could only conjure up one picture, the Himalayas being flooded.
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The helmer of cult disaster flicks like Independence Day and Day After Tomorrow said that he chose to begin and end the cinematic catastrophe in India, because he wanted to depict a global catastrophe, not an American one.
The film starring John Cusack along with Indian actor Jimi Mistry depicts the end of the world foretold by an ancient Mayan calendar, but doomsday begins in Vijaywada, Andhra Pradesh and ends with the Himalayas going under water.
“The first image that came into my head for 2012, was of water coming over the Himalayas. The movie shows you what a global flood is,” Emerich said.
The filmmaker who has a penchant for razing the world to ground, does so again with gusto in 2012 which has created a tidal wave at the worldwide box office, raking in $225 million in its opening weekend.
“I’ve lived here in Los Angeles for 20 years and like it but I must say, it’s always fun to lay it to ruin,” says Emerich.
While twisters razed the city in The Day After Tomorrow, it was aliens who did the honours in Independence Day, but Emerich says that there is a method to his madness.
The 53-year-old director says that the inspiration to the film came from some real life events. See all those guys demonstrating at the G8 Summit? What would happen if they’re right? That kind of conspiracy was a starting point. When you type 2012 in Google, you get 240 million hits. That’s a lot,” said Emerich.
A TV sequel to the film is also in the works which depicts the resettling of earth in 2013 after the disaster. “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... Maybe they were on a piece of land that was spared, the possibilities are exciting,” says Emerich.