With the Mayans foreshadowing the end of times on 2012, Hollywood will be passing around a big, doomsday handbook three years in advance. On November 13, 2009, Columbia Pictures will premiere 2012, the newest disaster opus from director Roland Emmerich.

Emmerich’s film comes as a natural succession of his earlier epics in the genre, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. But while “Independence” depended on fire, and “Tomorrow” banked on ice, to bring about the world’s end, 2012 is delivering both and more.

If the newly released trailer is any indication, the film’s rationale revolves around the Mayan lunar calendar, which ceases counting on December of 2012. The Internet has long been alight with speculation about the apocalypse transpiring on that month.

Skeptics of the theory may find a voice in John Cusack’s character. In the trailer, Cusack appears to downplay the idea, jesting “What are the odds?” Those words, however, promptly invoke a lethal rain of meteors.

Earth, fire, and water all lay the world to waste for the rest of the trailer. Viewers see Las Vegas torn asunder by a “grand” canyon from nowhere, while tremors devastate Los Angeles.

Elsewhere, the Catholic faithful, including the Pope, watch helplessly as the Sistine Chapel’s roof cracks. The next shot shows the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica rolling over the piazza. Similarly, slabs of Rio de Janeiro can be seen sinking into the sea, Titanic-style, with Christ the Redeemer crumbling.

Halfway the trailer, the American military is shown filling ships with people, “for the continuity of the species.” At the trailer’s tail-end, skyrocketing waves rush inland, ironically ramming the USS John F Kennedy into the White House.

Columbia released a teaser trailer of the movie last year. In it, a Tibetan monk rings the gong in a monastery, after which a colossal tsunami engulfs him.

2012 also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Liam James, and Morgan Lily.