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The recent success of Doom 3 in sales has given a boost to plans for the Doom movie which now has an officially confirmed cast and a steady director.
Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock, is now definitely doing the movie while Karl Urban, of Lord of the Rings fame, is also included in the cast list.
Urban, who recently appeared in The Chronicles of Riddick, is used to being cast as the bad guy in movies. Both in the Chronicles and in the Bourne Supremacy, Urban was on the wrong side of viewers affections. This time however, intriguingly, Urban is rumoured to be John Grimm, leader of a special operations team which visits Mars space station in order to combat a demonic invasion.
This leaves a question mark hanging over Mr. Johnson's part in the venture. If we eliminate all other factors, the one which remains must be the truth... so if The Rock isn't a good guy he must be a Bad guy and if that is the case it is unlikely that The mighty Rock would accept the role of a goon, so the most likely part for DJ is likely to be that of The Devil. It's too soon to have any confirmation on that but it is an exciting and positive concept, after all The Rock has never played the bad guy since launching his career as the Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns.
Such a part in a major production would mark an important stage in The Rock's career as he will be joining a small but elite group of actors who have portrayed Evil One, including Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The Rock himself had, a couple of months ago in an interview with Empire, stated that he will be playing the ultimate bad guy.
The Doom movie project, which will follow a storyline similar to that of the Doom 3 video game, recently was handed to a new director, Andrzej Bartkowiak who has photographed an impressive selection of movies including another Evil project, The Devil's Advocate.
According to the latest news, Doom is being pushed full-steam-ahead, with shooting expected to start in mid-October, meaning that this may become DJs next project rather than John Woo's Spy Hunter.
One worrying aspect of this let's do this thing attitude may be the rumour suggesting that the movie may release in Summer 2005. Although perfectly feasible, such a release may mean that quality will be sacrificed in order to capitalize on the success of the game in time. After all the movie will be judged on how well it manages to recreate the tense atmosphere of the game and how creepy and scary it manages to become, no small task for any cast or director. We wholeheartedly wish the best of luck to the project since its success may help raise the quality level of all future game-to-movie projects.