More travel to 2012

Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster epic (or possibly “epic disaster”, considering the budget is rumored to be near $200 million) is drawing more actors into its vortex of sci-fi devastation.

The thriller, called 2012, has lured decidedly sexy female specimen Thandie Newton. She’s joined by the significantly less sexy but adorably roly-poly Oliver Platt, and Danny Glover, who’s probably just still hoping for another LETHAL WEAPON while slurring through junk like SHOOTER. Glover will play the President with Newton as his daughter (interestingly, Newton is currently in the White House in a more ghastly form as Condoleezza Rice in Oliver Stone’s Bush bio/comedy ‘W’).

The trio join the already-cast John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the flick, which involves some nonsense about parallel dimensions, a Mayan-predicted apocalypse and a global cataclysm. Emmerich, who loves destroying the country/planet real good (INDEPENDENCE DAY, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW), wrote the script with his 10,000 BC co-writer Harald Kloser, so we can probably expect a similar level of excitement and logic.

The movie is already set for release in July of next summer.