Channing Tatum does his best Gerard Butler and Bruce Willis impersonation in the first trailer for Sony’s White House Down. You know, the other film this year in which militaristic invaders are able to take over the nation’s capital’s most prized piece of real estate.
Based on a script from James Vanderbilt (Zodiac), White House Down follows the story of John Cale (Tatum), a simple man who wants the opportunity to serve on the President’s personal protection team. He is denied, of course, and then happens to be in the White House touring with his daughter at the “wrong place and the wrong time” when the bad guys led by Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty) show up. Cale naturally ends up getting the job anyway, only without pay and benefits.
Who better than to blow up national landmarks than Roland Emmerich, the director behind some of Hollywood’s most lavish destructive films over the past twenty years. Though the White House doesn’t get completely leveled in White House Down like it does in Independence Day, at least based on this first trailer, it does sustain a moderate amount of damage and will require “a shit load of screen doors.” The Die Hard references with this film and the recent box office success Olympus Has Fallen are all too easy.
Playing the Commander in Chief in White House Down is Jamie Foxx, fresh off his stint in the Academy Award-winning film Django Unchained. This role looks to be quite the opposite of Django as Foxx will be the one requiring protection and assistance.
Apparently mid-air disasters are all the rage in Hollywood and visual effects studios this year. Air Force One comes under attack in Marvel’s Iron Man 3 and again here in White House Down via a surface-to-air missile, and a commercial airliner gets attacked by zombies in World War Z.
White House Down also features Joey King, James Woods, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rachelle Lefevre. The attack and Channing Tatum defense commences on June 28, 2013.
