Doom: The Movie

[Mighty_Emperor]

Interview: Doom 3: The Movie

By John Gaudiosi -- Senior Editor
Published 3:45 PM CDT, August 27, 2004

Doom will be making the jump to the big screen, and we talk with id Software CEO, Todd Hollenshead about the film.

With the recent success of Doom 3 on the PC platform, and the upcoming release of Doom 3 on the Xbox, the franchise is all the buzz in the entertainment industry. Crossing the boundaries of gaming, Doom will soon be making the jump to the silver screen. We sat down with id Software CEO, Todd Hollenshead to chat about the upcoming movie.

GameDAILY: What is the latest status of the movie? I know the first deal expired after a year. Can you run through the process?

Todd Hollenshead: The script is close to final and we're very happy with it. Universal is in the process of casting and pre-production now. With every passing day I become more and more confident that we will see DOOM at movie theaters before the end of next year.

GD: Can you also trace the history of the Doom movies, dating back to I believe Spielberg's interest at one point?

TH: I'm not sure Steven was ever officially interested in directing the movie. Last summer Tim and I had a very good meeting with him, showing him the game, and even letting his son play it for a bit, but he never made a serious play for the rights. Ivan Reitman was associated with the very first movie deal, based on DOOM and DOOM II, but the rumor was that he chose to do the Howard Stern flick instead of DOOM. Ironically, I think it was Universal that had those initial rights. Those expired and we licensed the rights to Columbia. When that deal expired I decided I wanted to change how we were handling the movie rights. Ultimately we became a CAA client who worked to get the deal in 2002 with Warner Bros. as a "progress to completion" deal. Progress was being made all along, but when it came time for Warner Bros. to make a big payment to id to retain the rights and basically commit to production, they decided to allow the deal to expire. Enter Univeral, who basically stepped right into Warners' shoes on the deal. They are excited about the movie and want to start filming as soon as is reasonable.

GD: Why has it taken so long for what seems like such an easy conversion from game to film?

TH: Way back there were many false starts and a script that wasn't particularly compelling. When we started all over with CAA, the first thing that was done was getting John Wells and Lorenzo DiBonaventura on the project and they immediately focused on getting a good script in process. I think that's been the big difference this time around.

GD: What are your hopes and goals in terms of bringing Doom to the big screen?

TH: I want to see the movie be true to what the legacy of the DOOM games mean to fans. Scary, intense, lots of action, and consistent with what we've done in the games. However, movies and games are different media, so some things will and should be different. I'm not looking for "DOOM 3: The Movie" and that's not what it will be. The script is not based on the DOOM 3 story, but is based on the DOOM universe, so fans will see plenty in the movie that they will recognize from the game.

GD: Since Doom 3 is a retelling of the original, will the script focus more on the update than the original?

TH: We didn't tie the script to the specific story in the game. There are lots of similarities, but there are many things that are different in a way that's not inconsistent with what we've done in the games. I believe that fans will find the story in the movie fresh and exciting, but still very much DOOM.

GD: Would you say that given the sci-fi and horror aspects, this needs to be a tent pole 0 million type of film?

TH: I'm not a movie guy, so that's really outside of what I do. Lorenzo and John are the producers responsible for making the right decisions with Universal on the budget. And we're all excited about the potential, so they're going to spend what they need to spend to make a great movie.

GD: Given the popularity of the Doom franchise, and the fact that the game is known by people who know nothing about games, do you see this film becoming a franchise with sequels?

TH: I'd certainly like to see that, but the focus now is on making the first film a great flick. Sequels tend to sort themselves out if you do good work with the first film.

GD: Have you given any thought into convergence in the sense that characters from the movie might be included in a future game? (This is currently being done with the Resident Evil movies/games.)

TH: That's definitely something that we would consider as long as it fit in well with what we would want to put in the game. We wouldn't want to do it just as some token throw-in so we can say there's some movie relationship to the game. The game is the cornerstone property for us. A great movie would be amazingly cool, but it's still second place to the games being kick ass.

GD: Do you have a time frame in terms of when you'd like a script completed and when the film might hit theaters?

TH: The script is very close to final already. I'll be ecstatic if it's out by the end of next year. But I'm like other fans: the sooner the better!

http://general.gamerfeed.com/gf/news/7478/

I'd heard they were thinking of haivng The Rock as the star - how original.

 

[Anonymous]

Don't you just get the horrible feeling that Paul Anderson is waiting in the wings to direct it...

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Don't you just get the horrible feeling that Paul Anderson is waiting in the wings to direct it...

Dunno - computer game conversions and the undead? I'm worried Uwe Boll is pencilled in

 

[Graylien]

Why do you persist, Mr Anderson?

When will they ever learn? No-one ever likes films based on computer games. Critics hate them on principle, fans of the game complain that they messed up the storyline/missed the best bits out/didn't include my favourite character/introduced a tedious romantic subplot/introduced an irritating comedy sidekick played by Rob fecking Schneider etc etc, and the ordinary cinema-going public, who've never even played the game, come out of the cinema wondering just who the hell were all those people and why were they firing those big guns at each other? Everyone loses. Just stop it!

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

IMDB:
www.imdb.com/title/tt0419706/

Teaser:

http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/636/636398p1.html

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Reviews seem to vary from appaling to goo for what it is.

Doom

Brent Simon in Los Angeles

Dir: Andrzej Bartkowiak. US. 2005. 101mins.

Just as knowing one’s own intellectual limitations is its own form of intelligence, so it is wise for a film to have a keen sense of boundary and mission. Sometimes economy is the smartest choice, as Doom, the surprisingly enjoyable new adaptation of the wildly popular first-person videogame series, amply demonstrates.

While it does not necessarily break much new ground, its makers are smart enough to not try to do more than they have the means to convincingly accomplish.

Thusly, box office prospects for this mid-budget action flick – which opens in the US on Oct 21 - should be robust, both among avid fans of the source material and those simply looking for a diverting genre romp.

The premise is also easily graspable and its characterisations comfortably familiar enough for Doom to play equally well overseas, where the brand is also well known.

Ancillary income, too, will be strong, for if the $100m worldwide gross of broadly similar videogame adaptation Resident Evil is enough to warrant a sequel, then this too should kick-off a profitable franchise.

Set around 40 years in the future, Doom makes quick work of establishing its setting and plot. At the Olduvai Research Station, a remote scientific facility on Mars, some sort of creatures have escaped. The team of scientists call for a quarantine lockdown, and the Rapid Response Tactical Squad, an elite unit of eight hardened US Marines headed up by Sarge (The Rock), are summoned to investigate, retrieve research data and, if necessary, terminate with extreme prejudice.

Sarge and his crew transport through a gelatinous portal called “the Arc,” which links the Mars site to a militarised bunker in the Nevada desert. While Sarge is the gung-ho, no-nonsense id of the movie, its taciturn centre is Reaper aka John Grimm (Karl Urban).

Once the RRTS arrives at Olduvai, they meet up with Reaper’s sister, scientist Dr Samantha Grimm (Rosamund Pike, sporting one expression of blank puzzlement throughout). Dr Grimm and her team have been conducting archaeological research about a race of deceased humanoids with a mysterious 24th chromosome, but unauthorised human testing has resulted in some unholy genetic mutations that Sarge, Reaper and company must contend with in big-gun fashion.

The real knack of co-writers David Callaham (in his first produced script) and Wesley Strick’s screenplay is its smart structure. The movie trades in generic admonition and directives, clipped delivery and all.

It also requires its characters to too-frequently state the obvious with regards to what’s just happened on screen (eg “Your pupils are dilated,” and “He’s gone”) but it’s rooted to an admirable, though never really risky, degree of suspense rather than brawn, particularly in its first 45 minutes.

Director Andrzej Bartkowiak may have broken into directing via a string of cheap, East-meets-West action features (Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds), but his credits as a cinematographer include Thirteen Days and Speed, and date all the way back to Prince Of The City and Terms Of Endearment. Here he gives Doom a streamlined sense of purpose and clarity, and its grasp never really exceeds its means.

The acting certainly isn’t what’s going to carry Doom, or even spur most of its positive word of mouth. The Rock, in fact, so good in Be Cool and well focused in tailored productions like Walking Tall, backslides here a bit, playing Sarge with a pinch of demented glee out of step with the bleak (arguable) realism of the rest of the picture. Urban, though, is quite good, bringing a wounded gravitas to Reaper that really grounds the picture.

The creatures themselves are mostly CG biped variations of the Alien-inspired slimy things we’ve come to expect from sci-fi flicks, but Bartkowiak wisely cloaks them in shadow.

He also gives considerable time to the surface complications of the bickering human protagonists, while also serving up a great third act first-person shooter set piece, straight from the game, to tide over diehard Doom gamers.

www.screendaily.com/story.asp?storyid=23814&r=true

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Oh and Doom: The Comic:

Some time in 1996 a couple of guys got together and smoked what was apparently a large amount of crack and then injected pure heroin into their eyes and then proceeded to create what is now known only as 'the Doom comic'.

More explanaiton and the full comic at:

www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/

 

[ogopogo3]

I did NOT just read that comic. I'm hallucinating. That does NOT exist. Right now, I'm laying unconscious in a ditch somewhere and that comic is just a product of my clearly injured brain. It's the only explanation that makes sense.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

After reading it my IQ halved for a good couple of hours and, lets be honest, it was never that high to start with

 

[MaxMolyneux]

Doom 3 movie! Has there been movies of Doom 1 and 2?

All the Doom games are the same anyway nothing New in them.

These games have no stroyline too so how can they make a movie of it? :?

 

[Philo_T]

I did NOT just read that comic. I'm hallucinating. That does NOT exist. Right now, I'm laying unconscious in a ditch somewhere and that comic is just a product of my clearly injured brain. It's the only explanation that makes sense.

You know, when I ran across this before, I just gawped in amazement at the pictures. Ogopogo, you've led me to actually read the text, and I thank you. If the followoing soliloquy's in the movie, I'm am so there, dude with my $8 in my sweaty little paw. OMGWTFBBQROFL!

I'M COOKING WITH GAS! I'VE GOTTA HANDFULL OF VERTEBRAE AND A HEADFULL OF MAD! YEAH. THAT'S YOUR SPINAL CORD, BABY! DIG IT! WHO'S THE MAN? I'M THE MAN! I'M A BAD MAN! HOW BAD? REAL BAD! I'M A12.0 ON THE 10.0 SCALE OF BADDNESS! DON'T NEED A GUN... GUNS ARE FOR WUSSES!

--sic

AHHH! CHAINSAW! THE GREAT COMMUNICATOR!

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

One man in a hunt for the largest possible weapon - Freud would have a field day with all that!!

 

[Yithian]

One man in a hunt for the largest possible weapon - Freud would have a field day with all that!!

Exactly. What kind of person looks intently at a Doom computer game and proclaims: "There's a great film just waiting to be made from this!"

:?:

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

One man in a hunt for the largest possible weapon - Freud would have a field day with all that!!

Exactly. What kind of person looks intently at a Doom computer game and proclaims: "There's a great film just waiting to be made from this!"

:?:

I'm not sure even the directors mum would say it wasa great film - I think they looked at it and said:

1. There are a lot of fans of the game so thats guaranateed bums on seats.

2. Its a film adaptation of a computer game and even if we tried we couldn't do a worse job than Uwe Boll so we are laughing!! He has lowered the bar so much anyone is haivng a go

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

They are moving fast on this one:

Doom (R1) in February

Universal Studios Home Video have announced the Region 1 DVD release of Doom for 7th February 2006 priced at $29.98 SRP. The Rock stars in this sci-fi action movie based on the popular videogame series in which an experiment on a remote planet goes horribly wrong and a team of marines is sent to investigate.

Presented on DVD in its Unrated format the film runs an additional 12-minutes and will be available in separate Widescreen and Full Screen editions with English, French and Spanish audio (DD5.1 Surround) and subtitle options. Bonus features are TBC.

The original R rated theatrical cut will also be available but only as a Full Screen edition.

www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=59387

November 28: DOOM doubling up on DVD

DVD Active reports that last month’s video game-based monster actioner DOOM, starring Karl Urban and The Rock, will have two disc editions when it hits the home-video market February 7 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Following the recent trend, the movie will be presented in fullscreen only in its theatrical R-rated edition and in widescreen in its uncut version, which will run 113 minutes (about 12 minutes longer than the theatrical cut). Each disc will retail for $29.98; special features have yet to be announced. —Michael Gingold

www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5173

 

[many_angled_one]

Hey the film is not rocket science or anything amazingly special but it's pretty good actually. It is what you expect it to be really, and you are not expecting amazing dialogue and heart wrenching emotion.
Its an enjoyable film beleive it or not, I was expecting something really dire for this but I was pleasently surprised

 

[Anonymous]

Oh and Doom: The Comic:

Some time in 1996 a couple of guys got together and smoked what was apparently a large amount of crack and then injected pure heroin into their eyes and then proceeded to create what is now known only as 'the Doom comic'.

More explanaiton and the full comic at:

www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/

I actually have a Doom novel at home! Oh, the amount of hours I lost to the original game.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Ooooo a novel - what went on?? I'd have thought the plot was a little too thin to make a full novelisation even if it did make a mind bending comic (I'm unsure I could cope with 100-200 pages of something like the comic!!.

-----------
Reviews of the films from the Garudian and Observer (and the summary of the ratings is telling - everyone gives it 2/10 but the Sun gives it 6/10):

http://film.guardian.co.uk/Film_Page/0, ... 00,00.html

Doom

* Cert 15

Peter Bradshaw
Friday December 2, 2005
The Guardian


The violent video game Doom is notorious for having been the favourite of the two boys who shot up Columbine high school in the United States, killing 13 people. With something other than tact, the game has now been turned into a charmless and brainless horror movie about alien zombies on Mars, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as leader of a gung-ho special forces crew.

Even without the Columbine connection, this picture would leave a nasty taste in the mouth, particularly for one dumbed-down sequence, which boneheadedly suspends dialogue and narrative for a straight reconstruction of the game, with its "first-person shooter" graphics, just for all those purist Doom fans. Yecccch.

Doom

Philip French
Sunday December 4, 2005
The Observer

Based on a best-selling computer game, Doom is a dim reworking of Aliens starring the handsome former professional wrestler Dwayne Johnson, who performs under the nom de guerre the Rock. Here he leads an RRTS (rapid response tactical squad) of intrepid US marines sent to block a portal on Mars that is releasing monsters into a research station. The chief interest resides in guessing who'll be killed and in what order.