IN THE normal world, after any sudden tragedy, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In Hollywood there are only three stages: concept, pitch and deal.

Harrison Ford has already signed up for a movie version of last April’s assault by Marines on Fallujah in Iraq, even though bodies are still on the ground, being nibbled by dogs.

The murder in 2002 of the fashion writer Christa Worthington in Cape Cod, who was found with her two-year-old daughter next to her body, is being adapted into a film this year, even though the killer is still at large.

As for the tragedy in the Far East, the only question is how soon one can start pitching Tsunami: The Movie without seeming tasteless. To judge by the latte-fuelled discussion I heard in Los Angeles between a writer and a producer this week, the answer is not a moment longer. “It’s Earthquake meets The Perfect Storm!” The pair I eavesdropped were deadly serious as they compared the tsunami to 9/11 and ticked off all the reasons why the tsunami won hands down as a movie premise. What follows is a rough paraphrase.

Writer: “First off, the villain is Mother Nature. You can’t offend anyone with a natural disaster. It’s not a crazy Arab terrorist who’s going to incite protesters and reduce your Middle East box office.

“And, yes, it’s a disaster, but it’s the best kind. Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances showing humanity at its best. Everyone has to pull together. It’s the most common cause there is — survival.

“It’s original. No one could even spell tsunami before this. They’ve seen big waves out at sea, but not hitting land.”

Producer, musing: “Wasn’t there a big wave in Escape from LA?”

Writer: “What’s amazing is that everyone was on vacation but no one got the money shot on video. Not like the attack on the twin towers. That was 14 cameras going at once, every angle.”

Producer, still musing: “Peter Fonda surfs this big wave right into the city.”

Writer: “And you’ve got a genuinely upbeat ending. All these parallel stories and most of them end badly, but you finish with the survivors. You’ve got that kid on the log, being chased by the shark. You have families getting reunited.”

Producer, back on track: “It’s a great ending.”

Writer: “And everyone gets humbled. That’s the lesson. We’re all just tiny specks in the Universe, but if we live, it’s the triumph of the human spirit.”

Producer, really excited by now: “That’s the problem with the 9/11 story. Bin Laden is still out there.”

Writer, triumphant: “Exactly. No third act.”

It reads more crass and heartless than it sounded. The epilogue of the conversation was actually one of envy at the effect television news can achieve when such a disaster strikes, the kind of gut-wrenching response that most movies can only dream about. American TV news is already jacked up to grip the viewer with constant panic — killer restaurants, killer baby seats. But these are only a tabloid substitute until a genuinely affecting disaster strikes.

In his lectures on film, theatre and TV at UCLA, Peter Guber, the former head of Sony Pictures, liked to sum up American news shows with three words. “E. Mo. Shun.”

In the 1930s Warner Bros specialised in movies that were “ripped from the headlines”. But studios take a lot longer to make films now, so it is more likely that Tsunami: The Mini Series will come first.

However it is treated, though, the tsunami will push the Hollywood disaster movie back to more elemental examples of catastrophe and put the sting back into ensemble death. The genre was ailing because it used increasingly implausible conceits. The Day After Tomorrow, last year, was about global warming melting the polar ice gaps and raising sea levels to trigger an ice age. All in three days.

Instead of feeling humbled by the precariousness of existence, viewers could marvel at Dennis Quaid’s escape from an ice storm so cold it could freeze rotating helicopter blades. He, however, got by with a small yellow tent.

Hollywood’s drawback with a tsunami movie will be that it does not happen on American soil. But as I listened to my two Hollywood types, I learnt that this problem can be solved too. The island of La Palma in the Canaries is an active volcano. At some point in the next thousand years it will blow and slide into the Atlantic, causing a “mega-tsunami” with waves ten times higher than any wave caused by an earthquake. Experts say a 150ft high wave would hit Britain within the hour (that’s your first subplot with the expendable character actors), and within four hours it would hit Boston, then New York, then Washington, reaching more than ten miles inland.

Producer, excited: “So would it hit the White House?”

Writer: “Completely!”

Producer, really excited: “This is fantastic. You’ve got to write this down!”

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010