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The 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure has been credited with kick-starting the modern day disaster genre
It had it all, suspense and thrills on the water with just as much beneath the waves.
Now Hollywood has produced a remake and in true blockbuster fashion Poseidon cost $US160 million to make.
The film stars veteran actors Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss along with younger talents Emmy Rossum and Josh Lucas.
In this remake of the 1972 classic a luxury ocean liner capsizes after being hit by a colossal wave, leaving its survivors to fend for themselves as they find a way out.
Russell told Close Up making the film was gruelling work.
"It was psychologically difficult to go underwater, in the underwater sets you couldn't get out of them...when you needed air you were dependant on someone to come in and give you the regulator...in between cuts," he says.
Lucas agrees that the all of the water work was trying.
"I was wet for five months...it is bizarre what happens to you when you are in the water for that period of time," says Lucas.
For co-star Richard Dreyfuss it wasn't so much the water that he found difficult, but the pure physicality of the role.
"All the crawling, all of the pulling and the all of yanking. That was really tough and there were times when I thought how the hell is this happening to me? To do that from 8 in the morning to 6, 5 days a week...We worked hard physically and I'm really a lazy person and don't like to work hard physically," Dreyfuss says.
Poseidon is directed by Wolfgang Peterson, who bought us such blockbusters as Troy and The Perfect Storm. He says the physical demands are good for the actors and the audience's enjoyment.
"The audience is sophisticated these days... It's good for the actors, it's good for their reputation... for the whole thing as an actor that you believe them and that you appreciate that they did it themselves," says Peterson.
Poseidon opens in New Zealand on June 1.
