14 Quotes by Wolfgang Petersen

We like Batman - we understand him, we suffer with him. On the other hand, we want to be Superman. But they're conflicting philosophies. Let's bring them together in one movie and see how we, as an audience, wrestle with our inner demons.

Theaters are always going to be around, and doing fine. With computers and technology, we're becoming more and more secluded from each other. And the movie theater is one of the last places where we can still gather and experience something together. I don't think the desire for that magic will ever go away.

Achilles was like a rock star of his day so it made sense to have Brad Pitt playing him.

We're getting the script in a few weeks, and if everything goes fine and that script goes in the right direction, it could indeed be my next one.

I expect some people will walk out of the theater. But I don't want to be timid. I want to treat the disaster genre realistically. That's what makes it effective and truly scary.

There is an art to casting. And I hope we will see more ensemble films. I don't like star-led films, it's much better to have more stars in one film so that the audience can see them working together.

It was a chance to do a film reflecting our phobias today, our fear of terrorism or disaster, like 9-11 or whatever nature can do to us. A natural disaster like this is sort of a metaphor for the impossible and most disastrous thing you can imagine, and what would we do when it hits?

I must have seen 200 girls out of the 3,000 we auditioned. It was hell. In the end we had our own currency for the girls we saw. We would ask - how many ships could she launch? It was 212, 380, so on and so forth, but as soon as we saw Diane we knew we had the right face.

In reality, I think there aren't really such things as "bad guys" and "good guys.