Armageddon  Armageddon is a 1998 American science fiction disaster film produced and directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film follows a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers sent by NASA to stop a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It stars Bruce Willis with Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, Keith David and Steve Buscemi. The film was a commercial success, grossing $553 million worldwide against a $140 million budget and becoming the highest-grossing film of 1998. However, the film received mostly mixed reviews from critics. According to Bruce Joel Rubin, writer of Deep Impact, a production president at Disney took notes on everything the writer said during lunch about his script and initiated Armageddon as a counter film at Disney. Nine writers worked on the script, five of whom are credited. In addition to Robert Roy Pool, Jonathan Hensleigh, Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno and J. J. Abrams, the writers involved included Paul Attanasio, Ann Biderman, Scott Rosenberg and Robert Towne. Originally, it was Hensleigh's script, based on Pool's original, that had been given the green-light by Touchstone. Then-producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, hired the succession of scribes for rewrites and polishes. Astronomers would subsequently note that Deep Impact was more scientifically accurate. Bruce Willis was cast in the film as part of a three-picture deal he cut with the studio to compensate them for the dissolution of 1997's Broadway Brawler. He received a significant pay cut for the picture as part of the deal. In May 1998, Walt Disney Studios chairman Joe Roth expanded the film's budget by $3 million to include additional special effects scenes by Dream Quest Images showing an asteroid impacting Paris. This additional footage, incorporated two months prior to the film's release, was specifically added for the television advertising campaign to visually differentiate the film from Deep Impact which was released a few months before.