THE APOCALYPSE (In Development)

• THE APOCALYPSE

Actor-slash-writer-slash-producer Seth Rogen was at theToronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for the past week promoting twofilms he co-starred in, both which mix comedy with more drama we've seen fromRogen in the past: Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz and Jonathan Levine's 50/50.

It was for the latter that ComingSoon.net spoke with Rogen,and he confirmed to us that the horror-comedy project The Apocalypse, based ona fake trailer Rogen made with Jay Baruchel in 2007 called "Jay and Sethvs. the Apocalypse," is almost ready to go with Rogen planning toco-direct with long-time writing and producing partner Evan Goldberg.

"We're packaging the whole movie right now and we'regetting the cast locked into place, which looks like it's finally happening,and we should start shooting in February," he told us during our interviewslot.

Earlier in the week, he revealed to the Winnipeg Free Presssome of that cast, as well as why the film will no longer be titled "Jayand Seth vs. the Apocalypse" as planned. Apparently, Rogen and Goldberghave secretly added a couple of familiar names to join Seth and Jay in fightingthat Apocalypse, including two actors they've worked with quite a bit, JonahHill and James Franco.

Seth Rogen & Jay Baruchel

"It's all our friends, luckily, and we all play ourselvesin the movie," he told them. "I literally play Seth Rogen in themovie and Jay Baruchel literally plays himself in the movie and others - JonahHill, James Franco - they're literally playing themselves in the movie."

"It's a movie about a bunch of friends who are stuck ina house together as the apocalypse happens outside and they kind of barricadethemselves in," he elaborated on the film's main plot. "They thinkthey've kind of survived the worst and then they realize they all really can'tstand to be around each other as they're stuck in this house together."

Having made 50/50 relatively inexpensively by going theindependent route, we asked whether that would continue with this project, towhich he replied, "It has been tempting to approach things differently,honesty, and the Apocalypse movie has a slightly higher budget, but we aretrying to approach the financing it from the a different way than we normallywould to try and assure as much creative control as possible."