New Orleans ? With roughly two-thirds of New Orleans residents still living elsewhere, casting directors weren’t sure what kind of turnout to expect for the first major casting call since Hurricane Katrina hit almost five months ago.

But as casting directors for the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced thriller “Deja Vu” began setting up registration tables at a suburban New Orleans mall Saturday morning, people were already waiting for their chance at stardom.

The film stars Oscar-winning Denzel Washington, who will play a time-traveling FBI agent who tries to save a woman from being murdered, and Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

“I need thousands and thousands of people,” casting director Judy Bouley told a crowd of potential extras as dozens of others waited in a corridor near the mall’s food court.

Shooting for “Deja Vu” is scheduled to begin in February. Though several videos and documentaries have been filmed here since Katrina, among them a video by New Orleans rap artist Juvenile and a Katrina documentary by filmmaker Spike Lee, “Deja Vu” is the first major motion picture to do so.