If Roland Emmerich is truly on the verge of making a huge spec sale with his latest apocalyptic hogwash, currently titled 2012 (guess he’s in his “year phase”), then maybe 10,000 B.C. has more going for it commercially than we’ve seen from the trailers and TV spots.  Or maybe the studios just like working with him because they know exactly what they’re gonna get:  lots and lots and lots of stoopid.

According to Variety‘s Michael Fleming, Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser sent their screenplay around to all of the major studios yesterday (question:  does that still include New Line?).  Not surprisingly, most of them were sufficiently intrigued to request a Wednesday meeting with the German “Master of Derivative Disaster” where he’ll lay out his “budget projection and creative aspirations” (I’m trying to figure out where the former ends and the latter begins).  Come tomorrow, they’ll enter outrageous bids for a project that could’ve been commissioned for a bulk shipment of Nerds from any random second grade classroom.

Fleming’s sources claim that 2012 actually has “more going for it than the big idea that studios love”.  The mind reels at those possibilities.  “In Day After Tomorrow, my characters outrun cold air; in 2012, they fight it!”  “This time, our species’ undoing is rancid cheese.”  “In the future, everyone speaks Nell.”

2012 is intended as a 2009 tentpole, so expect a dispiriting sale as soon as tomorrow evening!