The Sci-Fi Horror Action Thriller On Netflix That Features A Billion-Dollar Star
The video game adaptation Doom features movie star Dwayne Johnson and is streaming now on Netflix. The 2005 science fiction movie is directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak and is loosely modeled after the popular video game series. Johnson is credited as The Rock and appears alongside Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Razaaq Adoti.
The video game adaptation Doom, starring Dwayne Johnson, is streaming on Netflix.
The Doom movie is about a group of marines who are sent to Mars to conduct a rescue mission at a facility there, where they discover creatures with demonic qualities. The original video game, which was published in 1993, began its story on the moons of Mars following Doomguy as he battled demonic creatures all the way to hell. The popular MS-DOS game spawned multiple sequels, a board game, comic books, and novels, perhaps making a cinematic adaptation inevitable.
The company that created the Doom video game, id Software, had originally struck movie rights deals with Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures. But when those expired, the company sold the rights to Warner Bros., whose contract required that the film be given a green light for production within a year. When that didn’t happen, Universal again got the rights to the franchise and began production on the film in 2004.
The Doom movie involved production companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, and Germany. It takes place in 2046, 20 years after the discovery of the Ark, a wormhole portal to an ancient city on Mars where a research facility has been established. A distress call from the facility leads to the deployment of eight Marines to Mars to investigate what has happened and render aid.
Karl Urban stars as the Doom movie’s version of Doomguy, John “Reaper” Grimm, whose wife Dr Samantha “Sam” Grimm is played by Rosamund Pike. Also on the team are Roark “Destroyer” Gannon, Eric “Goat” Fantom, Gregory “Duke” Schofield, Marcus “Pinky” Pinzerowski, and Mark “Kid” Dantalian. Yes, most of the characters in this film featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson have nicknames in quotation marks, as does Johnson’s character, Sgt. Asher “Sarge” Maho.
Both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vin Diesel were considered for what became Dwayne Johnson’s role in the Doom movie, but both actors turned it down.
It was the success of the game Doom II in 1994 that began movie rights discussions, but there were initially multiple obstacles to production. One of the reasons cited by then-id Software CEO Todd Hollenshed for the initial stalling of the film was the shooting at Columbine High School. At the time, the event made gun-based video games a difficult sell as they had been blamed as an inspiration for the attack.
The Doom movie was also delayed, he said, by a lack of producers and decent scripts for the project. The rights were eventually picked up by producers Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and John Wells, who shepherded the project through its various iterations as it moved from one movie studio to the next, including a 15-month stay at Warner Bros. awaiting a green light. When it eventually found its home again at Universal, the studio was ready to move forward with the project and production began soon thereafter.
Military advisor Tom McAdams trained Johnson and his co-stars who portrayed the Rapid Response Tactical Squad for two weeks…
Both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vin Diesel were considered for what became Dwayne Johnson’s role in the Doom movie, but both actors turned it down. Johnson, on the other hand, later said that he felt a connection with the character, feeling that he was a very good fit for the role and that the character was one to whom he could relate.
Military advisor Tom McAdams trained Johnson and his co-stars who portrayed the Rapid Response Tactical Squad for two weeks, teaching them everything they would need to know to believably portray soldiers on screen, even if those soldiers were in the future and on Mars.
The Doom movie did not do well in theaters, but it still stands as a guilty pleasure film for some and could be interesting to those who enjoy both video game adaptations and action films with science fiction and horror elements. It also stands as a record of early attempts to adapt popular video games to the big screen and an interesting entry in the career of Dwayne Johnson, before he became quite the star he is today. You can stream Doom now on Netflix.
