Cusack goes to 2012

When it comes to John Cusack, I tend think of him in terms of quirky characters rather than big-budget summer tentpole flicks (CON AIR aside).

And yet here he is joining up with a maestro of the blockbuster, Roland Emmerich, for the sci-fi/disaster thriller 2012. Not a sequel to Cusack’s horror tale 1408, this time he’ll play an “academic researcher 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.”

End of the world then, got it. Not a stretch for Emmerich, who’s already trashed the present several times (INDEPENDENCE DAY, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW), so I suppose there’s nowhere left to go except the future and/or other universes. Perhaps we should heed his apocalyptic warnings this time, since most of his other cinematic predictions have come true (climate change, alien invasion, New York being attacked by a giant monster, armies of reanimated soldiers).

The awesome Chiwetel Ejiofor is also in talks to help stop the end of the world. Cusack will next be seen in the (surprisingly blunt) satire WAR, INC.