A John Cusack Blockbuster Is Climbing Streaming Charts
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John Cusack hasn’t been all that active as of late, with this year’s film The Pursuit marking the first feature he’s appeared in since 2020. Thanks to streaming, however, the star is just as relevant as ever thanks to streaming. According to Flix Patrol, a website that tracks all film and television titles climbing the charts on various streaming services around the globe, the apocalyptic thriller 2012 is currently #7 on Hulu.
2012 was released in theaters on November 13, 2009, at a time when a popular doomsday theory was spreading like wildfire. A large percentage of people around the globe believed the world would end on December 21, 2012, due to the fact that the Mayan calendar supposedly ended on the same date after 5,125 years. Not surprisingly, the Roland Emmerich-directed disaster flick starring John Cusack further advanced the theory.
In the film, a geologist by the name of Dr. Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his team discover that the earth’s core is heating up, and he warns the President of the United States that the crust of the earth is becoming unstable. Without proper preparations for saving a fraction of the world’s population, the entire human race is doomed. Meanwhile, an unsuccessful writer, Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) stumbles on the same information. While the world’s leaders race to build arks to escape the impending cataclysm, Jackson struggles to find a way to save his family.
Roland Emmerich, who’s directed several disaster movies including The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, credits the 2012 doomsday theory as well as Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods as the film’s inspiration. After co-writing the spec script, the filmmaker marketed the project to studios in early 2008, with Sony Pictures eventually receiving the rights. John Cusack was one of the first actors to join the cast of the feature, which was filmed in just two and a half months.
2012 opened to mostly negative reviews, with critics blasting the shallow screenplay and repetitive action sequences. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a rotten score of 39% from critics based on 246 reviews and an audience score of 47%. Still, both critics and everyday audiences agreed that the special effects were impressive, and John Cusack received praise for shouldering the movie as best as he could with his compelling performance.
Even though reception for the disaster flick was generally negative, it raked in an impressive $65 million in its debut weekend and went on to earn nearly $800 million globally. Even with a monster budget of $200 million, with a large portion of that figure undoubtedly spent on special effects, 2012 proved to be a financial hit for Sony Pictures. To this day, it’s the highest-grossing John Cusack motion picture.
In case you missed seeing the film when it was released back in 2009 because you were preoccupied with doomsday preparations, now is your chance to catch the apocalyptic thriller. Directed by Roland Emmerich from a screenplay he co-wrote with frequent collaborator Harald Kloser, 2012 stars John Cusack, Thandiwe Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Tom McCarthy, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Liam James, and Morgan Lilly. The movie is currently available to stream on Hulu with a Starz subscription.
