Thomas McCarthy, the director of acclaimed indies The Station Agent and this week's new release, The Visitor, has joined the cast of Roland Emmerich’s latest end-of-the-world epic, 2012.
McCarthy – who started life as an actor, and who can be seen in the likes of Syriana, Baby Mama and Peter Jackson’s forthcoming The Lovely Bones – will play the boyfriend of Amanda Peet’s character (who’s the ex-wife of the movie’s hero, John Cusack) in the disaster movie, which focuses on a disparate group of characters as the world endures a series of disasters in 2012, the year when the Mayans predicted that the world would end.
"As an actor, I've never worked on anything with this scale before, and I always go see these movies," McCarthy told The Hollywood Reporter. "And then there's the director part of me. I get really excited about working with directors like this, who do things that are so wildly different from me. And he [Emmerich] really is. He works on a totally different canvas.”
He certainly does, although the cast for 2012 is shaping up to be his most impressive since Independence Day, with Cusack, Peet and McCarthy being joined by the likes of Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Oliver Platt. Here’s hoping that McCarthy finds Emmerich is finally ready to marry spectacle with substance.
Filming on 2012 is set to begin in Vancouver this August, for a release next year. If you’re surprised, don’t be – why release it in 2012? Who’s going to be left to watch it?