Actually, when I did "10,000 B.C.," in the middle of production, I wanted to quit my job, because everything went wrong.

Dean [Devlin, Emmerich's partner on "Independence Day"] and I always said that we'd only do it when we had a really good story that excites us both, and we have the story written. And we've had it for a year and a half, two years. So we've been ready.

Do not fear. Some things will never change.

We have certain things where we know they exist or "everybody knows they exist," but naturally nobody can photograph them, because they are so super secret. For example, the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center exists, but nobody knows how it looks, but it's a so called bunker where he can survive a nuclear attack.

I always try to convince people that there has to be a lot of material about the subject matter, so they created a couple of pieces. One is about doomsday prophecies.

In the first earthquake scene [ in "2012"], there was only a limo and a plane. That was it. There was nothing else there, so everything had to be created in the computer, and that's always very difficult.

When it comes to action, I'd say Mel Gibson and Will [Smith] were great.