What if we are on the brink of a new Ice Age? This is the question that haunts climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) in the new blockbuster disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow.

Hall's research indicates that global warming could trigger an abrupt and catastrophic shift in the planet's climate. The ice cores that he's drilled in Antarctica show that it happened before, ten thousand years ago.

And now he's warning officials that it could happen again if they don't act soon. But his warning comes too late. It all begins when Hall witnesses a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island break off the Antarctic Ice Shelf.

Then a series of increasingly severe weather events start to unfold around the globe: hail the size of grapefruit batters Tokyo; record-breaking hurricane winds pound Hawaii; snow falls in New Delhi; and then a devastating series of tornadoes whips through Los Angeles. They confirm Jack's worst fears: these intense weather events are symptoms of a massive global change.

While Jack warns the White House of the impending climate shift, his 17-year-old son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds himself trapped in New York City where he and some friends have been competing in a high school academic competition. He must now cope with the severe flooding and plummeting temperatures in Manhattan.

Having taken refuge inside the Manhattan Public Library, Sam manages to reach his father by phone. Jack only has time for one warning: stay inside at all costs. As full-scale, massive evacuations to the south begin, Jack heads north to New York City to save Sam. But not even Jack is prepared for what is about to happen to him, to his son, and to his planet. In Independence Day, Roland Emmerich brought us the near destruction of the earth by aliens. Now, in The Day After Tomorrow, the enemy is an even more devastating force: nature itself. "It's an epic tale of survival and heroism with non-stop action and spectacular visual effects," says producer Mark Gordon.

Although Emmerich's brand of spectacle is integral to telling the story, he says the movie is not void of the human element. "No matter how big the effects are," says Emmerich, "the heart of the movie is still human drama.

"The father and son characters played by Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal are vulnerable, conflicted and loving. That's what makes their struggle against this incredible force of nature so exciting. It's the universal struggle of Man against Nature. It's survival against the odds. Ultimately, it's the triumph of the human spirit."

According to Dennis Quaid, these words describe the weather inside and outside the Montreal sound stages where the production was based for five months during the winter of 2002-03. "It was cold everywhere," says Quaid, who portrays climatologist Jack Hall. "It was cold inside the stages, it was cold outside the stages, it was cold during the day and cold as hell at night. There we were in Montreal from November to April during one of their coldest winters on record making this huge disaster movie about the next killer Ice Age. We couldn't escape from it.

"It actually got to a point where we learned to recognise people not by their faces but by the colour of their parkas. During production, if we weren't trudging through the middle of a blizzard," says Quaid, "then we were probably freezing wet because of the torrential rains or hailstorms or floods or hurricanes that were happening on the other stages.

"Anyone who isn't a fan of the Weather Channel now certainly will be after they see this movie because it has it all. It's every disaster flick you've ever seen all rolled into one giant non-stop global meteorological cataclysm."