And the winner is Sony Pictures Entertainment!

All the hooplah the last several weeks has been who would fork up the most bucks to get their hands on the rights to the Roland Emmerich big budget film “2012.” Now that Sony has the prize pre-production can get underway for this movie about the supposed upcoming apocalypse predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012.

This proposed epic film, on the order of Emmerich’s current pre-historic saga “10,000 B.C.” and his previous big money movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” could run Sony as much as $200 million to make. The script for “2012” has been penned by Emmerich and Harald Kloser.

Now that Sony has the project in its pocket, the studio is setting its eye on a late summer 2009 release.

[Note: This movie is not to be confused with the family/fantasy film of the same name directed by Tom Dey]