"If you look at 'The Perfect Storm' and 'Das Boot,' it's really amazing," says producer Mike Fleiss, whose idea it was to approach Petersen with the project. "Wolfgang gives you that incredible sense of dread and claustrophobia and the ratcheting up of intensity in the water."

Warner Bros. production exec Greg Silverman had actually passed on Poseidon three or four times but changed his mind when Petersen signed on. "He knows more about water and visual effects involving water than anyone else on the planet."

Leading man Josh Lucas was every bit as skeptical at first.

"I'm not a fan of remakes, and I didn't quite understand what they were trying to do when I first read it," says the Poseidon star. All that changed when he met with Petersen.

The director told Lucas, "I want to complete what is a trilogy in my mind."

The structure mirrors Das Boot. A wild party suddenly turns, trapping a small group of people in a hellish situation.

To reinforce the connection, Petersen begins the pic the same way he began Das Boot, with an underwater shot that shows the ship's fuselage slowly emerging from the gloom.

In Poseidon, Petersen takes the effect even further, showing the prow of the enormous cruise ship underwater, then pushing through the surface and circling the doomed vessel from the air.

The producers say the nearly-three-minute shot is the most complex visual effect ILM has ever produced, merging live-action elements with a 360-degree view of a 1,200-foot ship that never existed in the real world. Petersen is most proud, though, of the ship's interaction with the rogue wave.

"Wolfgang and (studio supervisor) Boyd Shermis felt all the way through that the only way to tell the story in a new and fresh way was to be able to show images that you never could have seen 30 years ago," says ILM vfx supervisor Kim Libreri.

But the big difference between Poseidon and Petersen's other pics — and the reason he decided to direct the project — was the characters.

"It's not talking about professional people on boats," the director explains. "It's not sailors or fishermen — it's people like you and me. You confront an audience with themselves."

The all-new ensemble includes a gambler (Lucas), a retired New York mayor (Kurt Russell) and a handful of others determined to escape the belly of the beast.

"You're not acting when you're in three feet of water and you're being blasted by a 100-mile-an-hour fan, a big chunk of the room is on fire and they're throwing plastic and rubber to simulate metal," says Lucas, who was hospitalized twice during the shoot. "Every single actor on that movie set was at some point or another hurt or sick."

But the reality pays off, especially toward the end. Where the original depends on a rather improbable rescue, the Poseidon characters must escape the ship on their own, which offers the possibility of something neither Das Boot nor The Perfect Storm could — a happy ending.

[as featured in Daily Variety]