Doom Movie in Production For Aug 2005 Release

Lord Prox writes "Doom: The motion picture is now in production from Universal Pictures for a release date of August 5, 2005. According to IMDB the cast includes The Rock, Rosamund Pike, Razaaq Adoti, Ben Daniels, and Karl Urban. The plot and setting is right from the game."

Censorship?

[2.7182]

I heard that an issue was the amount of goriness. Remember the soldiers hanging from meathooks ? Apparently the director wants to show that!

BULLSHIT Alert...

[MrRTFM]

The IMDB site looks suspect - it has been tricked before ..

'GNAA' style movies have appeared there, and all the article links point to the one spot.

I would love to see a DOOM movie - I've only been waiting about 12 years now, but one day I hope it will come out...

Re:Censorship?

[telbij]

Why would they censor it? They have that in Hellraiser, Event Horizon, Silence of the Lambs, etc...

Re:Censorship?

[stratjakt]

Chicks got hung on a meathook back in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and that guy was actually after a PG-13 rating.

People remember that as one of the goriest slasher flicks of all time, but if you watch the movie closely, you see very little actual blood or gore.

You see a girl being lifted up, camera cuts to the front, you see the washtub underneath her - you know what it's for, but there's no blood. Your imagination supplies the scary parts.

But of course, that was just good filmmaking, which I don't expect of a "Hey this is a popular game, I bet we could rake in a couple bucks, see if the Rock is available" flick.

Possible?

[21chrisp]

Call me a pessimist, but I can't see modern Hollywood producing such a violent and gory film. This will probably be another sci-fi/horror flick turned PG-13 (which you can't really call Doom). No studio in it's right mind is going to release a film with people gutted and hanging on hooks. Soccer Moms of the world would have them for lunch.

Re:yeah right

[stratjakt]

What the article submitter probably meant, was, that the plot isn't from the game, but from all the comic book and Doom novel spin-offs from the game. Some geeks are really into all that crap.

To me it was always about "shoot monsters", I never even took the time to realize the monsters were demons, and I was a space marine, and that the whole thing was happening on the moon (or earth, or mars).

Doom 3 tries to jam the backstory down your throat, although I liked the franchise better without a plot. You don't need a reason to shoot monsters, you shoot them simply because they are monsters.

Re:Censorship?

[lukewarmfusion]

Good filmmaking makes you scare yourself. Really gory movies aren't usually scary to me. I think the classic examples is from Reservoir Dogs - when he cuts the ear off. The music, the camera pan/tilt, the screams... you never see anything but you immediately start imagining what might be happening.

My wife pointed out that the filmmaking in A Time to Kill (was on TV last night) did the same thing; you never see the terrible things they're doing to the girl, but you know what's going on.

The "rake in a couple bucks" attitude is likely to be the perspective of the studios. But the filmmaker, writer, etc. are fans of the game... so you're going to get a mix of the studio perspective (money) and the gamer perspective (how cool can we make this). Could make for a no-brainer that's fun to watch.

My son read the script

[jmichaelg]

My son is an avid film buff and Doom player. By chance, he got a copy of the script. An excerpt from his email describing the script:

Bad doesn't begin to describe it. It is one of the single best examples of everything thats wrong with Hollywood. The charachter

sic development is so awful that you actually want everyone to die so that the movie will.
(spoiler warning)...
And one of the marines (john) and his scientist sister figure out that essentially this virus from another planet infects the DNA of people and then, if they are bad, manipulates their inner badness into an external representation making them monsters (resulting in lines like "we've all got a monster inside"). So John, since he has not been infected because all the monsters know that he is so good (literally thats the rationale), has his sister pump him full of the virus, and it manipulates his goodness into an angelic form making him an angel (seriously).

Re:Didn't we already discuss this to death?

[FortKnox]

What's worse is there hasn't been a discussion about Halflife the motion picture [imdb.com] which is also now in production...

Yeah, but

[pavon]

This has been reported all over the place, including interviews with John Carmak himself. It is still slightly vaporware, but is definately not a hoax.

Re:Oh no, not the Rock...

[Deusy]

The poor man's Vin Diesel.

Oh really. And can you name a good Vim Diesel movie except for Pitch Black?

Thought not, next quip please.

Re:Sorry, she's busy playing Honor Harrington in

[Anonymous Coward]

(For those who don't know, Angelina Jolie was able to adopt a Cambodian child in unbelievably expedited fashion while the Weber's adoption -- and seemingly everyone else who wasn't famous --was placed on bureaucratic hold.)

Rather, Weber's adoption was placed on hold because Angelina Jolie couldn't be bothered to play by the rules, so smuggled the kid out of the country without the right paperwork, and so directly fucked over everyone else trying to adopt at the time.

Re:Flashlight or gun?

[DarthVain]

I don't know... They could have a lot of fun with this movie... If they make it a kind of Action/Comedy/Parody it might actually be worth seeing. What it will probably will be is a sub-par action film with lots of CGI and effects... But they could have a lot of fun.. like the whole flash light thing... they could have the Rock going down some dark hallway, freaking out due to monsters, frantically switching back and forth between flashlight and shotgun... then finally saying something glib like 'screw this' and duct taping the two together... I would laugh, everyone knows that bit... Or little things like Ads for NVIDIA and ATI, maybe taking shots at the vid card cheating industry... or like making the detonation code for a big bomb at the end being 'idkfa' or someting like that... The Rock can be a funny guy when he wants to, he had that one good movie. So in closing I don't think the movie is 'doomed' (sorry had to) to failure, that is just the most likely result. However if they get away from the game plot (such that it is), and embellish with some witty humor, it might be ok. Anyway just my two cents...

Re:yeah right

[CAIMLAS]

Even though doom has a "bad" storyline, that doesn't mean it won't make a good movie. A good scriptwriter can resurrect even the blandest of plot outlines into an excellent, hillarious, action-packed film.

Take Indiana Jones, for example. It's one of my favorite films, and just came to mind, so I'll use it. How do you summarize the storyline (of, say, raiders of the lost ark) for that film? How about, "US archeologist battles nazis in egypt to try and regain ancient biblical artifacts" - now think of all the completely cheesed out films you've seen with similar plots. It's all in the presentation. Consider Beowulf - not much to that plot, really, in summary, but it evolved over time to become a wonderful epic.

Even if they were to use the basic plot laid out at the beginning of (and gradually throughout) Doom 3, they would have something to start with. Then give the mischelaneous people encountered throughout the game a larger role (or other people) in the character's quest. Add a lot of jokes (in the nature of films such as Shrek), and it would strike a cord with many of the people that played the original doom. (Well, with my group atl east. Remember the 'demon' - the red bull-like creature that charged? We called it a penis monster because it looked like a giant cock. I'm sure other sexual references could be made throughout the film... but maybe that's just my twisted sense of humor). Another action film that I'm reminded of that would have been bland and boring sci-fi without the humor is The 5th Element. Remember those damn pig creatures? The action was -cheesy-. But it was a pretty freakign good film, as there was a large amount of humor intertwined throughout it.

That said, I agree with you. It'll likely suck horribly. I think their best bet is to not try to make it a horror film, but to make it a film that appeals to what made Doom initially popular - to a large respect, just running around shooting things and having blood squirt everyhwere, making jokes at 4am while drinking mountain dew about the game characters, etc. etc. - I'm thinking along the lines of things like the "exploding wall of blood" scene in Evil Dead 2. That would Rock (and, now that I think about it, The Rock would probably be a pretty damn good "Ash" type character, as he's quite over the top with his acting... hrm. I'm starting to see a lot of (likely unfulfillable) potential here.

Still, there's no way it could be worse than tomb raider. (On second thought, at least TR had fleshy boobs...)

Rosamund Pike's weird life

[philgross]

Did anyone else notice that Rosamund Pike appears to be filming Pride and Prejudice [imdb.com] and Doom [imdb.com] simultaneously? Now that's a true test for an actress. I hope she doesn't get confused between her two roles...