It has been a long time coming but the highly-anticipated 2012 trailer has finally been released to the public with much critical and fan adoration.

Following on from the popular trailers for Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla, Roland Emmerich proves that nobody is directing trailers with the same panache and reckless abandon for US monuments quite like the German trailer auteur.

Set in the not too distant future, the trailer for 2012 tells the story of a desperate families struggle to survive around the apocalypse. John Cusack stars as the father struggling to re-unite his broken family and save their lives from certain doom in this electrifying trailer performance.

“Cusack’s father is the moral core to the trailer’s story” quoted top television journalist Frank Wires of BBC’s Real Film. “The action comes thick and fast but without Cusack the integrity of this two and half minute trailer would be lost!”

Meanwhile Cusack is backed by a stellar supporting cast featuring Oliver Platt as the greasy Presidential Chief of Staff, a villain so despicable that his one line haunts the rest of the proceedings. The trailer also features veteran stage actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who brings suitable gravitas as a scientist who may hold the key to humanity’s salvation – and Danny Glover appears in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo. This trailer is packed with star-wattage!

“The cast is electrifying” said one fan at the online premiere “I couldn’t take my eyes off of Chiwetel. His speech to Oliver Platt puts the whole film into relevant social context”.

The initial announcement that Emmerich was set to direct another disaster movie trailer was met with fan trepidation. After all, the trailer could have been an epic disaster. The last trailer released by Emmerich – the much maligned 10,000 BC – left audiences wondering whether the director still had it in him to pack the same two and a half minute punch we were used to. Luckily with everything from comets, floods and avalanches this trailer is sure not to disappoint his die-hard fanbase.

“We really didn’t want to retread old ground with this trailer” said visual effects honcho Carl Griffin. “We wanted people to feel that they were getting basically three or even four minutes of epic action packed into two and a half and that was a real challenge”. Everything from downtown L.A. to even the White House feature amongst the epic destruction - “We’ve all seen the White House destroyed before in the ID4 trailer and that was great! And we also flooded New York to great reaction in The Day After Tomorrow trailer…I think it was about six months into shooting when Roland came to me and said ‘Why don’t mix the two?’ Frankly we never looked back”.

The 2012 trailer is currently playing online everywhere, and proving to be a harrowing, exciting and action-packed production to rival any other trailer output from Paul W S Anderson, Brett Ratner or Michael Bay. It may be the end of the world but it’s hopefully the start of a long and exciting run of trailers from Roland Emmerich.

Here’s the trailer…

Because that's what John Cusack's stalker did, and she was hit with a 500ft restraining order for her troubles. Not that she stuck to it, though – Emily Leatherman was arrested again on Sunday for getting too close to John Cusack's home.

Honestly Emily Leatherman has to be John Cusack's number one fan to get herself in so much trouble just to meet him. In fact, we'd wager that Emily Leatherman loves John Cusack so much that she's watched Serendipity more times than anyone else on Earth. So twice, then.

We feel for Emily Leatherman, we really do. Not because of her poor choice of stalker target – although we can't imagine how unbearable it must be, having pinned your stalker hopes on someone early on, to try and stalk someone even though you know they're responsible for both Must Love Dogs and 1408 – but because she's had to watch the evolution of the stalking game from the sidelines lately.

Back in 2006 Emily Leatherman was rested for throwing bags of rocks with love letters inside them into John Cusack's garden. At the time we sympathised with John Cusack immeasurably – until that point the extent of his fan interaction involved a few nerdy men mumbling to him that some of Grosse Point Blank was quite good, and then a woman starts throwing rockbags over his fence? Terrifying.

After the stalking arrest, Emily Leatherman was ordered to keep 500 feet away from John Cusack at all times. But how can you be expected to sit by and idly watch when your high watermark of stalking gets eroded by nutters sending dildos to Britney Spears and trying to explode airports for Jodie Foster? You can't, which is why on Sunday Emily Leatherman hit the scene again. 

Unfortunately, whatever genius stalking plan Emily Leatherman had for John Cusack fell apart the instant she realised that she didn't quite have enough money for the cab fare, as E! Online reports:

Sheriff's spokesman Officer Steve Whitmore said deputies were called to the 24000 block of Malibu Road at about 7 p.m. by a cabbie who said a fare was refusing to pay for her ride into the area. Cusack himself then flagged the officers down and said he recognized the woman in the taxi as the one whom he accused of showing "unusual interest" in him. He said he did not think she had set foot on his property that day. Emily Leatherman, who has been identified as an L.A.-area transient, was also booked on charges of violating a restraining order and petty theft.

Leatherman is now in custody in a Malibu police station on $150,000 bail. And with her out of the way, the mantle of Number One Most Obsessed John Cusack Fan falls to Derek Stanmore, a semi-retired box welder from Middlesex. Derek doesn't know who John Cusack is, and wouldn't recognise him in a line-up even if the rest of the line-up was made of women and horses, but he did see some of Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil on TV a few months ago even though he fell asleep in the middle of it. And that alone makes him John Cusack's biggest fan.

Use your power well, Derek. Use your power well.

Read more:

Big-Time Cusack Fan Nabbed for Stalking – E! Online