Sony yesterday released the new teaser for the apocalyptic epic 2012, sort of a Groundhog Day meets The Day After Tomorrow in which Earth's inhabitants wake up one morning to find director Roland Emmerich once again destroying everything in sight. There's little on hand to illuminate the plot that star John Cusack so vigorously protected earlier this year in a chat with Defamer, but here's what we can suss from a couple viewings so far:

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What started out as a blaze that claimed a misshapen animatronic ape and a city pseudo-block on the Universal backlot is growing almost by the hour into something a lot costlier than the studio originally let on. First there were the Universal Music Group masters lost to fiery eternity (but they were already "transferred digitally," so, you know, whatever), and as alluded to by an astute Defamer commenter earlier today, a whole archive of film prints were rumoured to be lost as well.

And while they're not quite as bad as they sound at first, an e-mail sent Monday to repertory bookers around the country (and forwarded our way) indicates they're definitely true:

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The once-in-a-generation inferno that conveniently cleared Universal's backlot on Sunday wasn't without its share of withering casualties; as noted here this morning, the New York street exterior, Back to the Future courthouse and the studio tour's King Kong exhibit were among the most lamentable (and well-insured) studio features to burn to the ground. Potentially worse yet was Universal's "video vault," which was responsible for no small part of the billowing black plumes welcoming movie-loving tourists to Hollywood, and which got us hoping — or praying, rather, on our knees, crying and everything — that maybe The Sting II or Ghost Dad might be lost to the happiest high flames of Hell we'd ever seen.

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Angelenos are certainly accustomed to seeing swirling vortexes of doom forming over some of our favourite local landmarks—everywhere from the CAA Death Star to the WeHo Pinkberry dispensary—but the towering pillar of smoke that formed over Universal Studios early Sunday morning proved especially ominous—particularly after reports circulated that it wasn't so much the result of God pointing a bony finger of disapproval towards the immoral business practices unfolding within, but rather a massive fire engulfing some of our most cherished childhood memories. (The Mice Age blog catalogs the casualties. R.I.P., special-needs King Kong! *Sniff*) One of the greatest challenges firefighters faced was a lack of adequate water pressure (it's not as if Jim Carrey hadn't warned them after each and every thoroughly unsatisfying shower in his double-wide), a logistical challenge that required some extremely creative problem solving. From the LAT:

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Not to be outdone by the swift, shaky-cam destruction of its transcontinental nemeses in Cloverfield, Los Angeles is getting its own taste of catastrophe in the latest viral sensation to hit YouTube. At least we think it's L.A.; some have suggested that Case 1017 -- the grainy home video of HazMat-suited CDC officials and semi-automatic weapons fire that has attracted 1.1 million views since Saturday -- is a tease for Cloverfield 2 or M. Night Shyamalan's forthcoming Philly disaster epic The Happening. Follow the jump, however, for what turns out to be a much simpler explanation.

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