Though Roland Emmerich has stamped his name all over the genre in recent years, disaster movies are timeless and much bigger than he is; even Clint Eastwood seems to be getting into the game with the depiction of the 2004 tsunami in his new film Hereafter. And while there are plenty of natural disasters happening every week to mine for Hollywood action and romance, Warner Bros. will be looking back over a century to tell the story of the country's deadliest natural disaster, the hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas in 1900.

THR reports that screenwriter Daniel Sussman and Polly Johnsen have sold the original script Galveston to the studio, where Johnsen has a first-look deal. The script sounds straight from the Titanic playbook of injecting melodrama into a real-life story: there are two lovers about to be separated, bureaucrats struggling for power, and even a love triangle involving two brothers. All these mortal problems will be forgotten, of course, when the hurricane shows up to flatten the once-promising city and kill nearly 8,000 people.

Given that the film doesn't yet have a director, I'm hoping they're beating down Roland Emmerich's door to get him on board. Not that no one else is capable of a good disaster movie, but he seems to take such a unique, bizarre pleasure in setting up worlds and then destroying them entirely. Sure, the script might have potential to be something more than your typical soapy disaster epic-- but wouldn't it be more fun with the Emmerich spin? You know I'm right!