The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 American science fiction disaster film directed, co-produced, and co-written by Roland Emmerich. Based on the 1999 book The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, the film stars Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum, and Sela Ward.
It depicts catastrophic climatic effects following the disruption of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation. A series of extreme weather events usher in global cooling and lead to a new ice age.
Originally slated for release in the summer of 2003, The Day After Tomorrow premiered in Mexico City on May 17, 2004, and was theatrically released in the United States by 20th Century Fox on May 28. It was a commercial success, grossing $552 million worldwide against a production budget of $125 million, becoming the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2004. Filmed in Montreal, it was the highest-grossing Hollywood film made in Canada at its time of release. The film was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film and Best Special Effects at the Saturn Awards.
REAR COVER
From the director of Independence Day comes a spectacular roller-coaster ride that boasts pulse-pounding action and sensational, mind blowing special effects. When global warming triggers the onset of a new Ice Age, tornadoes flatten Los Angeles, a tidal wave engulfs New York City and the entire Northern Hemisphere begins to freeze solid. Now, climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid, his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) and a small band of survivors must ride out the growing superstorm and stay alive in the face of an enemy more powerful and relentless than any they've ever encountered: Mother Nature!
CAST
Dennis Quaid as Jack Hall, a NOAA paleoclimatologist.
Jake Gyllenhaal as Sam Hall, Jack's teenage son.
Sela Ward as Dr. Lucy Hall, a pediatrician who is Jack's wife and Sam's mother.
Emmy Rossum as Laura Chapman, a high school student and Sam's friend and love interest.
Ian Holm as Terry Rapson, a Scottish oceanographer of Scotland's Hedland Centre.
Arjay Smith as Brian Parks, a high school student and Sam and Laura's friend.
Austin Nichols as J.D., a preparatory school student of very wealthy parents who befriends Sam, Laura, and Brian.
Dash Mihok as Jason Evans, Jack's colleague
Jay O. Sanders as Frank Harris, Jack's colleague
Kenneth Welsh as Raymond Becker, the vice president of the United States
Perry King as Richard Blake, the president of the United States
Nestor Serrano as Tom Gomez, a NOAA administrator
Tamlyn Tomita as Janet Tokada, a NASA meteorologist
Glenn Plummer as Luther, a homeless New Yorker with a dog named "Buddha" who survives with Sam's group in the library.
Adrian Lester as Simon, Rapson's colleague.
Richard McMillan as Dennis, Rapson's colleague.
Sasha Roiz as Parker, an ISS astronaut.
Christopher Britton as Vorsteen
Amy Sloan as Elsa, a young woman and a survivor in Sam's group.
Sheila McCarthy as Judith, a librarian at the New York Public Library and a survivor in Sam's group.
Tom Rooney as Jeremy, a survivor in Sam's group who saves a 15th century Gutenberg Bible from being burned.
Christian Tessier as Aaron
Mimi Kuzyk as the Secretary of State
Chuck Shamata as Army General Pierce
Rick Hoffman as Gary
Jason Blicker as Paul
Robin Wilcock as Tony
Ayana O'Shun as Jama, a Senegalese woman traveling to New York with her daughter, Binata, and a survivor in Sam's group.
Marylou Belugou as Binata, Jama's daughter, and a survivor in Sam's group.
DEVELOPMENT
The Day After Tomorrow was inspired by Coast to Coast AM talk-radio host Art Bell and Whitley Strieber's book, The Coming Global Superstorm, and Strieber wrote the film's novelization. To choose a studio, writer Michael Wimer created an auction, with a copy of the script being sent to all major studios along with a term sheet. They had a 24-hour window to decide whether to produce the movie with Roland Emmerich directing, and Fox Studios was the only studio to accept the terms.
FILMING
The Day After Tomorrow was filmed predominantly in Montreal and Toronto, with some footage also shot in New York City and Chiyoda, Tokyo. Filming ran from November 7, 2002, until October 18, 2003.
VISUAL AFFECTS
The Day After Tomorrow features 416 visual effects shots, with nine effects houses, notably Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), and Digital Domain, and over 1,000 artists, working on the film for over a year.
Although a miniature set was initially considered according to the behind-the-scenes documentary, for the destruction of New York, effects artists instead utilized a 13-block-sized, LIDAR-scanned 3D model of Manhattan, with over 50,000 scanned photographs used for building textures. Due to its overall complexity and a tight schedule, the storm surge scene required as many as three special effects vendors for certain shots, with the digital water created by either Digital Domain or small effects house Tweak Films, depending on the shot. Miniatures were employed for a later underwater scene in which a city bus is crushed under the bulbous bow of an abandoned Russian tanker ship that had drifted inland.
Similarly, the opening flyover of Antarctica was also CGI, created by digitally scanning miniature iceberg models created out of sculpted styrofoam; the falling pieces of ice as the shelf cracks were entirely hand-animated. Running for approximately two and a half minutes in length, the scene was at the time the longest continuous all-CGI shot in film history, surpassing the space zoom-out from the opening of Contact (1997).
MUSIC
The Japanese dub has an exclusive theme song called "More Than a Million Miles" by a band coincidentally called Day After Tomorrow.
The Day After Tomorrow (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack of the film. It was released on May 18, 2004.
RELEASE
The film had its world premiere in Mexico City on May 17, 2004. It was released to theaters in the United States on May 28, 2004.
HOME MEDIA
The film was released on VHS and DVD by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on October 12, 2004, and was released in high-definition video on Blu-ray in North America on October 2, 2007, and in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2008, in 1080p with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio track and few bonus features. DVD sales were $110 million, bringing the film's gross to $652,771,772.
BOX OFFICE
The film came in second at the US box office behind Shrek 2 over its four-day Memorial Day opening and grossed $85,807,341. For twenty years, it would hold the record for having the highest opening weekend for a natural disaster film until 2024 when it was dethroned by Twisters. It led the per-theater average, with a four-day average of $25,053 (compared to Shrek 2's four-day average of $22,633). At the end of its theatrical run, the film had grossed $186,740,799 domestically and $552,639,571 worldwide. It was the second-highest opening-weekend film not to lead at the box office; Inside Out surpassed it in June 2015.
CRITICAL RESPONSE
On Rotten Tomatoes, 45% of 219 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The Day After Tomorrow is a ludicrous popcorn thriller filled with clunky dialogue, but spectacular visuals save it from being a total disaster." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 47 out of 100 based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described the film as "profoundly silly", but nonetheless said the film was effective and praised the special effects. He gave it three stars out of four. Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune wrote a completely negative review which considered the film unworthy of publicity for the climate change debate it had created.
DETAILED PLOT
Jack Hall, an American paleoclimatologist, and his colleagues Frank and Jason, drill for ice-core samples in the Larsen Ice Shelf for the NOAA, when the ice shelf suddenly begins to split away. At a UN conference in New Delhi, Jack discusses his research showing that climate change could cause an ice age, but US Vice President Raymond Becker dismisses his concerns. Professor Terry Rapson, an oceanographer of the Hedland Centre in Scotland, befriends Jack over his views of an inevitable climate shift. When several buoys in the Atlantic Ocean show a severe ocean temperature drop, Rapson concludes Jack's theories are correct. Jack's and Rapson's teams, along with NASA meteorologist Janet Tokada, build a forecast model based on Jack's research. Jack tries to get Becker to consider evacuations in the Northern States, but Becker again refuses.
A massive storm system develops in the northern hemisphere, splitting into three gigantic hurricane-like superstorms above Canada, Scotland, and Siberia. The storms pull frozen air from the upper troposphere into their center, flash-freezing anything caught in their eyes with temperatures below −150 degrees Fahrenheit (−101 degrees Celsius). It is confirmed by Jack that the force of the storm is so strong, and the effects are estimated to be so severe, that following the storm, the entire Northern Hemisphere would be in a new ice age. Meanwhile, the weather worsens across the world: Tokyo is struck by a giant hail storm, three helicopters sent to rescue the British Royal family from Balmoral Castle crash in Scotland after all their fuel lines and crew freeze after inadvertently flying into their superstorm's eye, and Los Angeles is devastated by a tornado outbreak. Following this, President Blake issues an executive order for the FAA to ground all air traffic across the country, but not before at least two planes crash due to severe turbulence.
In New York City, Jack's son Sam, along with his friends Brian Parks and Laura Chapman, participate in an academic decathlon, where they meet a new friend JD. New York is soon caught in the North American storm and the weather becomes progressively more violent, resulting in street flooding, and eventually a massive tsunami-like storm surge inundating Manhattan. This forces Sam's group to seek shelter at the New York Public Library, but not before Laura accidentally cuts her leg. While cellphone communications are down, Sam is able to contact Jack and his mother Lucy, a physician, through a working payphone; Jack advises him to stay inside and promises to rescue him. Rapson and his team perish in the European storm, while Lucy remains in a hospital caring for bed-ridden children, where she and her patients are eventually rescued by the authorities.
Upon Jack's suggestion, Blake orders the southern states to be evacuated into Mexico; the northern half is doomed to be hit by the superstorm but are warned by the government to seek shelter and stay warm. The Mexicans initially close the border, but reopen it after Blake agrees to cancel all Central and Latin American debt to the USA. With the storm having reached Washington, Blake perishes after his motorcade is caught in it, making Becker the new President. Jack, Jason, and Frank make their way to New York against all odds. In Pennsylvania, Frank falls through the skylight of a mall that had become covered in snow, and sacrifices himself by cutting his rope to prevent his friends from falling in after him. In the library, most survivors, as well as those from other structures, decide to head south once the floodwater outside freezes in spite of Sam's warnings, and are later found fatally frozen by Jack and Jason; only a few survivors end up heeding Sam's advice to stay put, burning books to stay warm as the temperatures plunge.
Laura develops blood poisoning from her injury, whereupon Sam, Brian, and JD scour a Russian cargo vessel that had drifted into the city for penicillin, fending off a pack of wolves which had escaped from Central Park Zoo. The eye of the North American storm arrives, freezing Manhattan solid, but Sam's group make it inside just in time. Likewise, Jack and Jason take shelter in an abandoned restaurant. Days later, the superstorms dissipate as Jack and Jason successfully reach the library, finding Sam's group alive. Jack then sends a radio message to US forces in Mexico.
Becker, in his first address as president from the US embassy in Mexico, apologizes on The Weather Channel for his ignorance, admits his mistake and sends helicopters to rescue survivors in the Northern States. Jack and Sam's group are picked up in Manhattan, where many people have survived. On the International Space Station, astronauts look down in awe at Earth's transformed surface, now with ice sheets extending across the northern hemisphere, and remarks that the "sky never looked so clear".