James Franco & Jonah Hill on for Jay & Seth Vs. The Apocalypse

Seth Rogen has been prepping his end-of-the-world epic Jay & Seth Vs. The Apocalypse for some time now, and he's lined up some star names for disaster-fodder.

James Franco and Jonah Hill will appear as themselves in the movie, which is spun off of a short that Rogen and Jay Baruchel appeared in back in 2007.

Speaking to the Winnipegg Free Press (via The Playlist ), Rogen said, "It’s a very strange movie, but it’s gonna happen."

"It’s all our friends, luckily, and we all play ourselves in the movie... I literally play Seth Rogen in the movie and Jay Baruchel literally plays himself in the movie and others - Jonah Hill, James Franco - they’re literally playing themselves in the movie."

Rogen went on to explain that the "horror comedy" is "a movie about a bunch of friends who are stuck in a house together as the apocalypse happens outside and they kind of barricade themselves in."

"They think they've kind of survived the worst and then they realize they all really can't stand to be around each other as they're stuck in this house together."

Baruchel had previously stated that he wants the film to feature "a bunch of cameos, but I just want them to be corpses. I want them to be like ‘oh god there’s Will Smith‘s dead body in the corner!’ And it would actually be him. So that’s my recurring joke for the movie: I want there to be a lot of dead famous people in it."

To check out the original faux-teaser that inspired it all, look no further:

According to IMDb , Rogen will be directing the movie, which will make it his debut. He has co-written it with regular scribbling partner Evan Goldberg ( Superbad , Pineapple Express ).

Shooting begins in early 2012, with a release expected later that year.

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.