John Cusack wears an IWC Pilot's Watches

Roland Emmerich spent two hundred million dollars destroying the world in his 2009 disaster film 2012. The premise is the Mayan calendar apocalypse: California falls into the ocean, Yellowstone explodes, an aircraft carrier rides a tsunami into the White House. John Cusack plays Jackson Curtis, a struggling novelist working as a limo driver who discovers the conspiracy through Woody Harrelson's deranged radio host broadcasting from a camper in Yellowstone. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the scientist who saw it coming, and Danny Glover plays the president.

The watch has a part in the plot. When Curtis needs seats on a small plane out of the disaster, he hands the pilot his Mark XVI as payment, calling it a very expensive piece his editor gave him back when he thought he was going to be somebody. IWC Schaffhausen confirmed the placement: reference IW325501, a 39mm stainless steel pilot's watch on black leather. IWC was founded in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, in 1868 by the American watchmaker Florentine Ariosto Jones, and the Pilot's Watch line descends from the Mark XI built for the Royal Air Force starting in 1948. The Mark XVI has a clean black dial with luminous numerals and the triangle marker at twelve o'clock.