Synopsis

A climatologist discovers that human-caused climate change is triggering a chain of extreme weather events that could plunge the Northern Hemisphere into a new ice age. As catastrophic storms devastate the United States, he faces the dangerous journey from Washington, D.C., to New York City to find his stranded son, who is sheltering with other survivors in the frozen city.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film was released in the United States on May 28, 2004, and runs for 124 minutes.

• The production used 416 visual-effects shots created by nine effects houses, with more than 1,000 artists working on the film for over a year.

• New York City was recreated digitally using a LIDAR-scanned 3D model covering 13 city blocks. More than 50,000 photographs were used to supply textures for the buildings.

• The opening Antarctic sequence was created with computer-generated imagery based partly on scans of miniature iceberg models. At approximately two and a half minutes, it was described at the time as the longest continuous all-CGI shot in film history.

• Much of the production took place in Montreal. A large amount of construction, set dressing, props, vehicles, and special-effects work was needed to create the film's flooded and frozen versions of New York and Los Angeles.

• The film's depiction of abrupt global climate change was intentionally dramatized for a disaster movie. Scientists criticized the compressed timescale and several of the physical mechanisms, while acknowledging the film's value in bringing climate-change concerns to a mass audience.

• The Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapsed in 2002, shortly after the filmmakers had written an opening sequence involving a similar event. The coincidence became one of the film's most widely discussed production anecdotes.

• The sequence in which travelers cross the Rio Grande was filmed near the U.S.-Mexico border, with extras actually crossing into Mexico for the scene.