Moviegoers have put 2012, and the promised Mayan Apocalypse, behind them - but the end of the world is still a hot topic in Hollywood. Every year, summer blockbuster movies remind us that we're only one alien invasion, city-sized meteor, 9.5 magnitude earthquake, or zombie virus outbreak away from total devastation. However, the summer of 2013 will see two comedy films attempt to make light of world-ending destruction. In August, Edgar Wright will release his latest Simon Pegg team-up The World's End but first, co-directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are releasing This is the End.

Taking a page from Judd Apatow's improv-style of filmmaking, Rogen and Goldberg assembled a star-studded cast (and buckets of fake blood) for their apocalypse comedy. Anyone who has seen the trailers for This is the End knows that, in the movie (which is based on their 2007 short), no A-lister is safe - as this apocalypse is also going to claim the lives of fan-favorite celebrities like Rihanna and Michael Cera, among others.

Last year, we had a chance to chat with the co-directors of This is the End Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg during group interviews on set. Check back in the coming days as we post further interviews - and make sure to read our full This is the End set visit report as well as interviews with cast members James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, and Craig Robinson.

Watch the latest trailer for This is the End below:

While movie fans will no doubt be split on which apocalypse comedy they're most excited to see this summer, only one of the films features fan-favorite actors and actresses playing heightened versions of their offscreen personas. Since the lines between fiction and reality are blurred, Rogen and Goldberg had to be careful about the balance between inside jokes and gags that would still make less-familiar moviegoers laugh - especially in the face of the apocalypse!

NOTE: The following is an abridged (and more concise) version of the interviews. You can read the entire transcript from our conversations with the co-directors by clicking the link below:

This is the End Cast

Responding to a question about inside-jokes, and the careful balance between real-life and fiction, the co-directors claim that while they're mindful of references that might be too obscure, they shoot everything. Then, after filming is complete, they use test audiences to help them figure out which lines to keep and which ones to cut:

Rogen: We let the audience tell us.

Goldberg: And it’s pretty apparent too when something goes too far.

Rogen: Yeah and it’s too inside but basically - people don’t laugh, we generally don’t use it. So as long… as long as the people are laughing at it, then we’ll use it and if there is something that seems like it’s too inside or something like that or just a reference the people don’t get, then, you know, we don’t want to like impose things on people. We let the audience tell us. You know, honestly, like even having you guys watch it was a testing ground for us to see what you guys respond to. I mean, it’s helpful for us. I mean we… this is going to sound scary, just relax [loud background noise]. Sorry you’re freaking [Laughing] Yeah, I mean, we show it to as many people as we can just to see how people react and see what people respond to and think is funny and what shit people don’t like basically.

The core concept behind This is the End has been around since 2007 - when Rogen, Goldberg, and Baruchel teamed with director Jason Stone for a short film version. The short was titled Jay and Seth vs. the Apocalypse and centered primarily on Baruchel and Rogen - though, even back then, the filmmakers had something much bigger in mind.

Check out the trailer for Jay and Seth vs. the Apocalypse below:

Considering This is the End is one of the most anticipated comedy films of Summer 2013, it's natural to question why it took so long for a feature version to gain traction. The core idea, celebrities stuck in a house together with an unfolding apocalypse outside, is bound to generate buzz - especially with a fan-favorite actor like Rogen in front of and behind the camera. However, according to the filmmakers, the project was always on their minds but they were waiting until they could ensure enough money to do the rich premise justice:

Goldberg: The basic idea was: What’s the biggest concept we could do at the cheapest price possible? And that lends itself to making a big movie. So, like we… we never wanted to do a small version but we would’ve. If it came down to it.

Rogen: I mean - it was our End of the World. I mean we made an End of the World movie in that short, for like literally like zero dollars. [Laughing] So that was kind of the idea, was to make an epic giant movie that, you know, was somewhat contained at times so you could kind of afford to spend your money on the big stuff when you needed it.

Creatures This is the End

Anyone following our This is the End coverage knows that, previously, in talks with the cast, the actors opened-up about what it was like to play those "heightened versions" of themselves. In our interview with Rogen and Goldberg we made sure to ask the directors/writers how they approached creating fictional variations of their friends:

Goldberg: We definitely started off with everyone being full-blown assholes and then realized that it was too silly and we kind of give them each more realistic characters.

Rogen: Gave them different type of assholes! [Laughing]

Goldberg: Strengths and weaknesses.

Rogen: But not everyone is an asshole. I mean Jonah. Different people have different shades in the movie. I don’t think any of these guys are really playing themselves in any real way, but I think every character is rounded to some degree within the reality of the movie. I wouldn’t say, it’s necessarily like any of us, but everyone has their own little part to the story.

Seth Rogen Jay Baruchel This is the End

One key "part" of the story is Jay Baruchel, who despite numerous roles in fan-favorite comedies and TV series, was written as somewhat of a Hollywood outsider in This is the End. Baruchel's character is designed to be more relatable - serving as an entry point for the audience in a movie chock-full of high-power celebrity cameos. According to Rogen and Goldberg, Baruchel is a good example of how one of their real life friends is "rounded" within "the reality of the movie" - since the actor, more than the rest of the cast, is less inclined to Los Angeles living:

Rogen: He plays an actor but he does live in Montreal. He doesn’t live in Los Angeles - which is a part of the story, and that he was so adverse to the LA lifestyle that he literally left and works from Montreal - which is kind of true. So, that was just something that we used. He just kind of represents the old friends versus the new friends – that was the idea more than anything. And the fact that he doesn’t live in L.A. we thought was a good way to separate him from the other guys, and also make him a more relatable kind of eye into the movie. Because, in the movie, he doesn’t live the Hollywood lifestyle like, you know, Franco and some of the other characters.

Of course, the biggest question that many moviegoers have ahead of the film's release is: what causes the end of the world? If This is the End, as the title suggests, is Earth invaded by extraterrestrials, smited by God, or destroyed in a man-made nuclear apocalypse? The trailers for the film provide a few hints (monstrous creatures, a giant sinkhole, and beams of light) but out of context it's hard to say for certain what exactly is happening. Nevertheless, fans shouldn't expect Goldberg or Rogen to provide a clear-cut explanation ahead of the movie's debut:

Goldberg: I’m not really enlightening people as to exactly how that goes down, or what happens. It’s just the “End of the World.” [Laughing]

Rogen: Be nice to try to have some mystery. Other people seem to do it well.

Celebrity Cameos This is the End

That said, the co-directors did tease one (unlikely) possibility - after we pressed them for information on the quadrupedal creature that's seen running past a doorframe in the most recent trailer:

Rogen: You saw some creatures? Who knows if that’s a place-holder creature or what? Jay could be a demon this whole movie!

Check back here at Screen Rant for more on This is the End. As mentioned, we’ll continue to publish interviews with the cast and filmmakers in the coming weeks leading up to the movie's release. However, if you’re eager for more This is the End info right now, make sure to check out our This is the End news archive - which includes the following featured articles along with much more:

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This is the End releases on June 12, 2013.

Follow me on Twitter @benkendrick for more on This is the End as well as future movie, TV, and gaming news.

Next Page: The unabridged transcript of our conversation with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen

One of the things James was telling us was about the paintings and some of those because we saw some of the things in the footage of like in-jokes that you guys have about other movies that you’ve made. How do you find a good balance between having fun in-jokes that audiences will pick up on and overwhelming audiences with too many jokes they might not pick up on?

Evan Goldberg: I mean we’re shooting more than we’ll use. That’s for sure. Then we guess and test after.

Rogen: We let the audience tell us honestly.

Goldberg: And it’s pretty apparent too when something goes too far.

Rogen: Yeah and it’s too inside but basically - people don’t laugh, we generally don’t use it. So as long… as long as the people are laughing at it, then we’ll use it and if there is something that seems like it’s too inside or something like that or just a reference the people don’t get, then, you know, we don’t want to like impose things on people. We let the audience tell us. You know, honestly, like even having you guys watch it was a testing ground for us to see what you guys respond to. I mean, it’s helpful for us. I mean we… this is going to sound scary, just relax [loud background noise]. Sorry you’re freaking [Laughing] Yeah, I mean, we show it to as many people as we can just to see how people react and see what people respond to and think is funny and what shit people don’t like basically.

You’ve been developing this for years, the ideas been around as a short, was it always going to be such a big movie?

Goldberg:  Well the initial is short. The basic idea was: What’s the biggest concept we could do at the cheapest price possible? And that lends itself to making a big movie. So, like we… we never wanted to do a small version but we would’ve. If it came down to it.

Rogen: I mean - it was our End of the World.  I mean we made an End of the World movie in that short, for like literally like zero dollars. [Laughing] So that was kind of the idea, was to make an epic giant movie that, you know, was somewhat contained at times so you could kind of afford to spend your money on the big stuff when you needed to basically.

It’s very Canadian tradition, Thornburg use to End the World, for a dollar and thirty cents!

Rogen: Exactly, it doesn’t take much but we hope to know, I mean, visual effects have come so far at this point, you really can do a lot with not a little money.

Goldberg:  Like Chronicle kind of blew our fucking minds.

Rogen: Yeah, we look to movies like Chronicle and Cloverfield and a lot of movies that use practical effects in great ways. Those were really what guided us and let us know what we could do something that was visually epic and gigantic but for a price that we could do whatever the fuck we wanted basically.

So you talked about practical effects, you have K&B doing your make up on this? It seems like for comedy, the more you push it, you almost can’t go too far. Just that head when Jonah picks it up and it’s pouring blood out of it.

Goldberg: It’s a Kill Bill’ish at times; we don’t quite go that crazy.

Rogen: More blood is something that’s said often on this set.

Goldberg:  It’s weird but at a point it becomes less gross if you put in a little more blood.

Rogen: Yeah. I think it’ll let people know that we think it’s funny. The human head does not hold that much blood right? [Laughing] It kind of adds to the imagination, but we are not necessarily striving for realism in every moment. I mean I think that’s what makes it funny too. It’s played for laughs.

It seems like before every take you guys are throwing lines out there. Are you writing this?

Goldberg: We’re shit writers.  [Laughing]

Rogen: I mean, we have a script, yeah. I’m sure we got a take of it here and there but it’s so silly to have all these guys in a movie together and not let them riff-off each other. You know, that was always our plan. It’s not that different then from capturing stunts at times. We put as many cameras on it as we can and we hope something fucking awesome is going to happen - and that is kind of what it’s like. So it would be silly for us to be too, strict with the lines because these guys - most of them are movie writers in their own rights. So it’s silly to not get their ideas and shit like that.

As you were writing it and describing these personalities to your friends, how did you decide, you know, how much of an asshole someone is going to be?

Goldberg: We definitely started off with everyone being full-blown assholes and then realized that it was too silly and we kind of give them each more realistic characters.

Rogen:  Gave them different type of assholes! [Laughing]

Goldberg: Strengths and weaknesses.

Rogen: But not everyone is an asshole. I mean Jonah. Different people have different shades in the movie. I don’t think any of these guys are really playing themselves in any real way, but I think every character is rounded to some degree within the reality of the movie. I wouldn’t say, it’s necessarily like any of us, but everyone has their own little part to the story.

Do you work on this script thinking of the actors?

Rogen: Oh yeah. We talked to all these guys about doing it like before we started writing.

Goldberg: We never ever thought they’d all do it - just by scheduling and all that.

Rogen: Yeah, we told them. We were like: “We don’t want to write a fucking movie with you guys in it if you guys aren’t going to do it. So just let us know if it’s something you think you would do.” And everyone said yes and so then we wrote it, after having talked to them all. So we knew we could do it basically.

You are shooting a lot these days, are you?

Rogen: Yeah, we shoot a lot these days.

Have you kept up this pace the whole time?

Rogen: Yes. Definitely. This is not even one of our hard days.

I’ve been impressed with the fact you guys aren’t doing a ton coverage, you pretty much get it and go.

Rogen: Yeah. You know, for these kind of hectic scenes, we don’t need to do clean singles of every guy or anything like that. For the more dialoguey scenes, like the inventory scene, that stuff we need to cover every guy individually. We use three cameras on a lot of those days where it’s like a big dialogue scene with a lot of guys.

How did you guys wind up writing Jay as the outsider? Because from the outside, it’s like “Okay, everyone is in the movies” but he’s the friend from home. Is that less real life than all the others?

Rogen: No. He plays an actor but he does live in Montreal. He doesn’t live in Los Angeles - which is a part of the story, and that he was so adverse to the LA lifestyle that he literally left and works from Montreal - which is kind of true. So, that was just something that we used. He just kind of represents the old friends versus the new friends – that was the idea more than anything. And the fact that he doesn’t live in L.A. we thought was a good way to separate him from the other guys, and also make him a more relatable kind of eye into the movie. Because, in the movie, he doesn’t live the Hollywood lifestyle like, you know, Franco and some of the other characters.

Talking about the title, obliviously it started as “Jay and Seth Versus the Apocalypse,” where as now it’s “End of the World.” Is it a problem that Steve Carell has a movie coming out titled “End of the World”? Do you guys ever worry about getting confused with the “The World’s End”?

Rogen: Yeah, there’s a chance this isn’t what the title ultimately ends up being. We suck with titles, we’ll be the first to admit it. If it’s not completely apparent what the movie should be called, then we have a hard time with it. So, this is what we’ve got for now. We’ll see what happens.

Were people just wanting to know what “Apocalypse” this was?

Rogen: No, we just couldn’t legally clear that title. Fox owns it! Titles are a motherfucker. Everyone owns every fucking title in the universe. Like they’re all registered with MPAA and it’s crazy. It’s really hard to get a title. Even with 50-50, Disney owned it. We had to call fucking Sean Bailey to get permission to use it. And I’ve called Tom Rothman over and over - they won’t let it go.

We did an interview a couple of months ago for Goon and you’ve mentioned that this, the “Apocalypse” in this was the rapture. Like how strictly biblical are you guys? Are you introducing crazy demon elements?

Goldberg: I’m not really enlightening people as to exactly how that goes down, or what happens. It’s just the “End of the World.” [Laughing]

Rogen: Be nice to try to have some mystery. Other people seem to do it well.

You have some kind of creature in there though, right? Because we saw that in the sizzle reel.

Rogen: You saw some creatures? Who knows if that’s a place-holder creature or what? Jay could be a demon this whole movie.

Is there anybody that you wanted in the film, either for a cameo or as part of the main cast that you weren’t able to fit in because of scheduling?

Rogen: We have some friends that weren’t able to do it, but when you watch it, you’ll notice that not every single person we’ve ever worked with was in it. That’s because a few of them had scheduling conflicts. [Laughing]

Goldberg: No one rejected us on content.

Rogen: Exactly, yeah. It was mostly just scheduling issues I would say.

You guys have been friends for so long, you’ve worked together for so long, but you’ve never directed a movie together. Has this put your friendship to the test?

Goldberg: Same old shit.

Rogen: Yeah, at this point, this is not the hardest thing that we’ve done together by a long shot. So it’s not that different. If anything, it’s just more fun. We get to do all the fun stuff.

Goldberg: It’s less of us being like “the fucking director’s wrong.”

Rogen: Exactly, us commiserating over how we would have done it differently.

Is there any difference for your process as writers when you’re doing something like neighborhood watch, where you come in to kind of work on something that’s already in progress or this where it’s your idea and you started – start to finished, and you know you’re going to end up directing?

Goldberg: Well we kind of, Neighborhood Watch, whenever we can, we don’t try not to read the script that we’re handed and just start fresh and do what we can.

Rogen: But we pretty much wrote it like a movie - we tried to make it as funny as humanly possible but, that being said, we kind of had nothing to do with the production of that movie on a practical level. So, there definitely is a difference when you’re not the producer, director, whatever on a movie and you’re just the writer on the movie.

You don’t have to worry about how to pull it off?

Rogen: Yeah, you don’t have to worry about how to pull it off and you probably have to listen. You know, when you’re not the producer, you’re just the writer, you have to be slightly more flexible I think with other people’s visions, you know?

Goldberg: Yeah, you can write more sentences like “the free way explodes, as forty buildings collapse.”

Rogen:  Yeah, he’ll figure out how to fucking do that!

I was really impressed by how much you guys have edited together and actually done. You have literally a year before this opens.

Rogen: We’ve got over an hour of the movie cut together.

Does that mean a lot of visual effects?  Have you been spending a lot of time there?

Rogen:  Yeah, we have got to get it as fast as possible. But our editor is just fast - I mean we haven’t been rushing - he’s just fast. He’s used to working on smaller movies with less time.

Goldberg: We didn’t sit him down and say like “you’ve got to edit this light fucking speed,” he just does.

Rogen: Yeah, he just goes fast.

Is it really obvious which jokes to keep? You obviously have so many different versions of the jokes and some of those scenes. Do you guys give notes?

Goldberg: Light smatterings of notes, maybe.

Rogen: Barely any of our notes have made it into this stuff, he’s kind of on a “plow forward” command.

Goldberg: We have an agreement that, if we give him a note, he’ll note it down, but he doesn’t have to do it until we’re done filming and – we’ll get to all that later.

Rogen: Yeah, but I think as he watches the scenes being shot, you could see like an evolution. It becomes clear which jokes we like and which ones we don’t, because we have the actors keep doing it, or stop doing certain ones. And, I think by the end, you know, after our two minute scene has become a twelve minute scene, it’s pretty clear through watching the raw footage which ones we you know, think are funny and which ones we don’t I think.

Now does finishing a cut earlier give you more time to test it? Because I know you guys are big believers in showing it to the audience and listening to the audience.

Rogen: Yeah, way more time. I mean if it was up to us I would show… I mean maybe not to a real audience, but I would show like a cut of this movie two weeks after we finish filming it if we can. Because we really don’t know what people are gonna respond to and how much. When we have this many jokes in each scene, some of the scenes are really long and have like you know, tons of jokes in them that we just need to pick which ones work the best. And the only way to really figure that out is by showing it to audience after audience after audience and really just whittling out every joke that doesn’t land the way you want it to.

You guys obviously worked with Sony before on quite a few movies. Did you always have a director you know, to kind of buffer you guys from having to deal with the studio and cuts and stuff like that? How’s it been so far with you guys not having to deal with any of that stuff?

Goldberg: Only when we worked with Judd was there this overall buffer between us in the studio ever since…

Rogen: With Neil there was not much buffer.

Goldberg: Yeah. Neal would be like “Come here. We’re going to go get in a huge fight with them.”

Rogen: Yeah, exactly. [All Laughing]

Goldberg: Neal made it fun. It was a shitty job to do but he made it fun to do.

Rogen: And we fought with him a lot also. I love Neal. I will say that over and over - but at times he was on the side of the studio more than our side.

Goldberg: Everything is boring-er without him around.

Rogen: Yeah he’s fucking hilarious, but no they’ve been pretty happy. I mean it’s not a disaster. That’s what’s nice with doing a smaller movie - you’re kind of off the radar, you know? They’re dealing with fucking other Neal Moritz movies. To compare this, one day of a Neal Moritz movie is this whole movie. So we’re not their biggest issue. We’re off - out of sight out of mind I think to some degree. Which is nice. We haven’t heard much from them.

Goldberg: It generally seems with us they’re like, “Is that worth a gamble?” and if they let us do it, then they just tell us.

Was there ever any talk about actually doing this in L.A. just for convenience of people coming in and out, doing shorter pieces?

Goldberg: Oh, yeah.

Rogen: Yeah and it’s set in L.A., so definitely we try to shoot in L.A. It’s just way too expensive and the tax credits here in New Orleans are - I mean this movie literally would have been impossible to make if we weren’t here. We got so much of our budget back in tax credits that it actually wouldn’t have been possible to make this movie anywhere else in the world.

Have you guys thought about the soundtrack and is R.E.M. a forgone conclusion?

Goldberg: Its crazy how often people bring that up!

Rogen: We’re thinking of a gospel-themed sound track. That kind of feels right.  [Laughter]

Do you guys model yourself after any directors you’ve worked with that you stepped behind the camera for the first time? Like are there people who you’re trying to be inspired by?

Goldberg: Oh, definitely, Judd, Woody Allen.

Rogen: Woody Allen. Yeah, we never worked with him!  [Laughing]

We know how he directs anyway.

Rogen: I mean I think our style is probably closest to Judd in the way that he is willing to completely let a new scene materialize on the day and in the moment. We haven’t worked with that many other people and on our movies you know, the ones that aren’t Judd movies, there’s usually a different writer than director - so there’s some level of respect that happens. The director won’t just suddenly say like, “Throw out all the fucking lines go crazy!” But since we’re both, we can do that, which is nice and there have been some scenes that we’ve done one take of and it’s like “This isn’t right” and we’ll literally, completely, re-write all of it in a few minutes. Or we’ll just improvise for an hour and see if something better comes up and it usually does and then we’ll just go with that version.

Goldberg: A few times though we’ve had like five actors, two of whom haven’t really worked with us and they’re just “What the fuck is going on right now? Like I had memorized the scene, I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

Rogen: Yeah, Exactly.

Goldberg : They all end up rolling with it in the end and having a good time.

Do you have any actors in mind that didn’t make it into the movie?

Rogen: Nope, Someone asked that you should’ve been paying attention! [All Laughing]

I’m always fascinated by co-directors. Can you talk a little bit about the process because you’re directing while you’re in the scene sometimes?

Rogen: I think to other people it might seem as though - if one of us is going off the rails or taking the scene in the direction - that the other one isn’t aware or something. The truth is we’ve had a hundred billion conversations with every element of this movie, literally, for the last six years when we started thinking of it. We kind of know how we want everything to be in a general way, and then there’s the general throw out any idea you want during the scene rule.

Goldberg: And it’s pretty much, when one of us is running with something, the other one just kind of lets that person talk unless they “disagree” and most the time we don’t - because we’ve already disagreed for months in pre-production.

Rogen: Yeah and we usually have come to a decision by now, but as you see when we’re rolling, we’ll check with the other guy to see if there’s anything the other guy wants - before we cut for example. But every once in a while one of us will have an idea the other guy doesn’t like and the beauty is you can just do both versions and then we can argue about it in six months from now.

Most of the stuff we’ve seen has been inside the house and I know you’ve been shooting so that the house get more destroyed as it goes along. Have you actually shot any exteriors yet? Are you shooting in L.A.?

Goldberg : No, we’ve like built L.A. here in New Orleans basically. It’s actually cheaper to literally construct Melrose in a parking lot here than to film on actual Melrose, which is what we did.

So you’ve already finished all the exteriors?

Rogen: Yeah, I don’t think that we have any more exteriors that – maybe one or two more exterior nights, but yeah we’ve done almost all of our exterior stuff already.

Can you guys say anything about Emma Watson’s role? Looks like from the sizzle reel that she has more than just a party cameo?

Rogen: Yeah, that’s all we can say; that’s all we should proudly say is that she has more than just a party cameo.

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This is the End releases on June 12, 2013.

Follow me on Twitter @benkendrick for more on This is the End as well as future movie, TV, and gaming news.