As I wrote when the teaser was revealed, older readers will remember the old-school “Sim City” game. You’d spend a ton of time building up a city, only to get bored and play God on your creation; the game allowed users to shake the ground with an earthquake and tear up buildings with tornados. It was tremendous fun. It’s surprising to me that this hasn’t been the set up for a disaster film yet, especially when the late 90’s and early 00’s were bloated with Roland Emmerich’s awful crap.
Dean Devlin, who wrote Independence Day, is channeling his inner Emmerich with Geostorm, a disaster film that looks like all the best parts of “Sim City” merged with an actual story.
“As a man (Gerard Butler) heads into space to prevent climate-controlling satellites from creating a storm of epic proportions, his brother discovers a plot to assassinate the president (Andy Garcia).”
Just look at this insane trailer that’s pretty much the ultimate disaster film!
The film stars Gerard Butler (Olympus Has Fallen, 300), Jim Sturgess (Cloud Atlas), Abbie Cornish (Limitless), Alexandra Maria Lara (Rush), Daniel Wu (The Man with the Iron Fists, Warcraft: The Beginning), with Oscar nominees Ed Harris (The Hours, Apollo 13) and Andy Garcia.
The script was written by Kieran and Michelle Mulroney and Dean Devlin. David Ellison and Dana Goldberg are producing via Skydance. Also producing are Devlin’s partners at Electric Entertainment, Marc Roskin and Rachel Olschan. Paul Schwake will executive produce.
Here’s the official synopsis:
“After an unprecedented series of natural disasters threatened the planet, the world’s leaders came together to create an intricate network of satellites to control the global climate and keep everyone safe. But now, something has gone wrong—the system built to protect the Earth is attacking it, and it’s a race against the clock to uncover the real threat before a worldwide geostorm wipes out everything…and everyone along with it.”
Butler stars as Jake, a scientist who, along with his brother, Max, played by Sturgess, is tasked with solving the satellite program’s malfunction. Cornish stars as Secret Service agent Sarah Wilson; Lara as Ute Fassbinder, the ISS astronaut who runs the space station; Wu as Cheng, the Hong Kong-based supervisor for the Dutch Boy Program; with Garcia as U.S. President Andrew Palma; and Harris as Secretary of State Leonard Dekkom.
The Geostorm is crashing in on October 20, 2017. I guess this weirdly is the perfect Halloween movie?!
