FILM · 2004 · USA
The Day After Tomorrow
- Directed by
- Roland Emmerich
- Runtime
- 124 min
- Studio
- 20th Century Fox, Centropolis Entertainment, Lionsgate
52 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
After paleoclimatologist Jack Hall is largely ignored by UN officials when presenting his environmental concerns about the beginning of a new Ice Age, his research proves true when a superstorm develops, setting off catastrophic natural disasters throughout the world. Trying to get to his son, Sam, who is trapped in New York City with his friend Laura and others, Jack and his crew must travel to get to Sam before…
52 Interesting Facts About The Day After Tomorrow
Interesting Facts (34)
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NASA was asked to consult on the film before it was made, but the agency refused, stating that the events in the film were too absurd to actually occur. NASA sent a note to all its employees stating that they were not permitted to comment on the plausibility of the events depicted, though it later lifted this restriction.
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South Park (1997) creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone managed to get hold of a copy of the film's script during pre-production. The pair planned to secretly shoot the same film word for word with puppets instead of actors and release it on the same day. They abandoned these plans after their lawyers convinced them that such a film would never be released.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
The storm's eye is meant to draw extremely cold air down from the upper troposphere, which is said to be the cause of people freezing instantly. Air temperature in the upper troposphere is around -57C / -71F and does not drop below -80C / -112F even at its most extreme, and at that temperature people and buildings do not freeze instantly. Oymyakon in Siberian Russia holds the record for the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth when it dropped to -71.6C / -97F, yet no one died from that cold. To freeze instantly you need an environment with high heat transfer, but air does not have that property.
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In the tornado sequence, the US Bank Tower (then known as the Library Tower and at the time the tallest building in Los Angeles) survives the tornado but appears heavily damaged. In an earlier Roland Emmerich film, "Independence Day" (1995), the tower was torn apart by an alien spacecraft, and in a later Emmerich film, "2012" (2009), it was toppled by a massive earthquake.
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When the camera pulls away from Earth after the astronaut shouts "the air is so clear," the image of Earth is a modified version of the "Blue Marble" image created by Robert Simmon. The Blue Marble image is composed of thousands of satellite photographs, with some of the clouds duplicated. Apple's iPhone uses the Blue Marble image as its default wallpaper.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
The film had a subplot involving Rick Hoffman that was mostly cut from the film, in which Hoffman and two friends were unethical businessmen working on an illegal securities trading scheme with a Japanese colleague. The Japanese man is still shown being struck and killed by the giant hail that falls during the ice storm, but the footage of him talking with Hoffman's character about how they need to steal money to avoid going to prison was edited out. This explains why Hoffman and his friends are introduced during the giant wave destruction of New York City and appear to be unlikable characters before they are swept away by the water (and their bus is later crushed by a cargo ship), because there is unused footage that portrays them as villains.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
The film establishes that the storm will affect the entire Northern Hemisphere, but that some countries, including Spain, will be spared from the ice. Simon's (Adrian Lester) first appearance comes as he bids farewell to his wife Jeanette (Anne Day-Jones), who is traveling to Spain; Terry Rapson (Sir Ian Holm) expresses a wish to be safely in Spain during the storm; and when Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) explains his theories to the President, the map on the television screen shows the ice in Europe stopping at France and Switzerland, leaving Spain and Italy ice-free. However, when two astronauts look down at Earth from the International Space Station, they can see that Spain and Italy, like the rest of the continent, are completely covered in ice. This is not necessarily a contradiction, but a sign that the storm is stronger than all the scientists predicted.
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Kenneth Welsh's casting as the Vice President was controversial because of his physical resemblance to Vice President Dick Cheney. Roland Emmerich, however, insisted on it for that reason and acknowledged that the President and Vice President characters were intended to criticize the Bush and Cheney administration's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
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The footage of the plane crashing in the Midwest before the FAA flight ban is footage of the Avianca Airlines crash on Long Island in January 1990. The hurricane footage comes from Hurricane Iniki in Hawaii (1992). It was shot by Roland Emmerich's assistant Aaron Boyd, who renamed the storm "Hurricane Noelani" in honor of Emmerich's Hawaiian wife. The snowstorm footage in the United Kingdom is taken from a January 2002 news report.
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The United States Embassy in Mexico was actually the Centro Vida/Life Center Ministries and school in El Paso, Texas. Mexico can be seen from the building on Glory Road near the university. The church and school have since moved. The Mexico–United States "bridge" is an overpass in El Paso facing Mexico. El Paso's real border bridges do not look like this; they are much stricter, with security, fences and Border Patrol Agents. During filming, local residents were concerned about closed streets and military-style helicopters landing and flying low over residential areas.
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The cover art of the original DVD and Blu-ray cases for this film showed the original poster, which depicts a frozen Statue of Liberty buried in snow and ice up to its nose. When the DVD and Blu-ray were re-released in 2015, the cover art on the cases was changed to show the Brooklyn Bridge being struck by the storm surge.
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This is the third film, after "Deluge (1933)" and "Deep Impact (1998)," in which the Statue of Liberty is struck by a giant wave. The statue remains standing in "Deluge" and "The Day After Tomorrow," but in "Deep Impact" it topples and its head is torn off. The Special Edition of the 1989 film "The Abyss" showed Lady Liberty nearly struck by a giant wave. This is also the second Roland Emmerich film to show her damaged; in his 1996 film "Independence Day," she is toppled by an alien attack on New York.
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Domestically, as of 2008, The Day After Tomorrow had earned the second-highest box office gross among films that failed to reach number one in US ticket revenue, behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002). On the world market, however, it outperformed My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002).
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On the bookshelf behind Jack's bed are Dennis Lehane's novels "Sacred" and "Gone, Baby, Gone"; Lehane also wrote "Mystic River," whose film adaptation featured Emmy Rossum.
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The theatrical release showed the American flag turning green at the end of the film, contrasting with the red, white and blue at the beginning. This meant that America had bought its way out of the problem it caused, namely climate change. A later version on disc shows the original red, white and blue at both the beginning and the end of the film.
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Production Story (8)
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In the shot showing the front facade of the library, lamps are seen in place of the iconic lions. According to a New York City Public Library employee, the studio did not want to pay the fee for filming the institution's trademarked statues, and therefore only made use of public-space filming rights.
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In the film's first scene, part of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica breaks off. At the climate conference that follows, Dr. Hall tells the Vice President of the United States that the last piece to break off from the ice shelf was the "size of Rhode Island." This is based on a real event between 2002 and 2003, when an area roughly the size of Rhode Island gradually collapsed on the Larsen B Ice Shelf.
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The script for this film was originally a film written by Sam and his friends when they were eleven years old. Writer and director Roland Emmerich changed them to high school students for Jake Gyllenhaal, whom he had seen in Emmerich's October Sky (1999). Emmerich asked, "Can Jake Gyllenhaal play a 17-year-old?"
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Behind the Scenes (1)
Characters & Cast (3)
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Just as Canadian actor Kenneth Welsh was cast as the environmental Vice President because he physically resembled the real-life former Vice President Dick Cheney, Perry King was cast as the US President because he could project a gentle demeanour and play a President who convincingly allowed the Vice President to tell him what to do, much as Roland Emmerich believed the then real-life President George W. Bush deferred to Cheney on major issues. This is also why King's President dies off-screen without any fuss, since Emmerich wanted the Vice President, in a key part of the film's closing story, to realise he was wrong and make up for his earlier failures.
Easter Eggs & References (1)
Deeper Meaning (3)
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Speaking with fans in Denver, Roland Emmerich said that while shooting The Patriot (2000) he became interested in making a film about weather. He said his whole day revolved around the weather forecast in order to shoot exterior scenes, and that he really just wanted to control the weather himself. Art Bell and Whitley Strieber's non-fiction book "The Coming Global Superstorm" was used as a reference. Emmerich acknowledges that the events depicted in the film are genuinely possible, but that the time frame in which they occur is incredibly short and that they were designed purely for entertainment value. In keeping with the film's ecological theme, Emmerich paid $200,000 out of his own pocket to make it Hollywood's first "carbon-neutral" production; all carbon dioxide from the production was offset through tree planting and renewable energy investments.
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A storm surge approaches New York and strikes the Statue of Liberty at the shoulder. The statue is 305 feet (93 meters) tall from base to torch, its right arm is 42 feet (nearly 13 meters) high, and Liberty Island is 21 feet (seven meters) high. This means the storm surge was 284 feet (86 meters) high.
Career & Awards (2)
Related pages
- Team America: World Police — The Day After Tomorrow comes up in the facts on that page
- South Park — The Day After Tomorrow comes up in the facts on that page
- Spider-Man: Far from Home — The Day After Tomorrow comes up in the facts on that page
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- Wikipedia
- IMDb
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