John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor are in negotiations to star in Roland Emmerich's $200 million apocalyptic epic "2012" for Sony Pictures reports the trades.

The disaster film centers on a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells the heroic struggle of the survivors.

Cusack is in talks to play divorced dad, writer and sometime limo driver Jackson Curtis, who goes on a heroic journey to save his family.

Ejiofor plays Adrian Helmsley, an idealistic science adviser to the president who also becomes a hero.

Emmerich is directing a script he penned with his "10,000 BC" co-writer Harald Kloser. Shooting begins in Los Angeles this July for release next July.