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New Doom Movie Will Have A Female Lead
The new Doom movie has cast actress Amy Manson in the lead role. The Doom series is one of the most iconic in all of gaming and helped make first-person shooters one of the most popular game genres. The games are relatively light on story, but usually involve scientists accidentally opening a portal to Hell on Mars, and it’s up to the player character – a marine affectionally dubbed Doomguy – to plough through the demonic hordes that spill out.
Doom received a movie translation in 2005, headed by Dwayne Johnson and Karl Urban. The movie kept the Mars setting but dropped the Hell angle, and while the film has its charms, a bad script and a dull first hour drag it down. That said, it does feature a fun FPS sequence that tries to recreate the feel of the game, and The Rock is good fun as the surprise villain of the story. The movie underperformed and a sequel never happened, so it came as a shock when actress Nina Bergman recently revealed she had signed on for Universal Pictures’ new Doom movie.
It was later confirmed that Universal 1440 Entertainment – the studio’s non-theatrical arm – was handling the project, suggesting the movie is intended to go straight to DVD or a streaming platform. Now sources have informed Dread Central the movie’s lead character will be played by Manson (Once Upon A Time). It also appears Tony Giglio (S.W.A.T.: Under Siege) will be directing, and the movie will begin shooting soon in Bulgaria.
While the movie heading direct to video may not look like a sign of confidence, there are plenty of examples of really solid action and horror titles bypassing theaters in recent years, including Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning and 1440’s Entertainment’s own Cult Of Chucky. The 2005 Doom movie was also a financial dud for Universal, so they while they may recognize they have a potentially valuable brand name with the series, they might be trying to reduce the risk this time around. That said, the movie will likely receive more of a promotional push than the standard STV release.
Dwayne Johnson recently revisited the video game movie genre with Rampage, which received a much warmer critical and financial reception than Doom. The actor later took to Twitter to celebrate the success of Rampage, while labelling his earlier video game movie a ‘stinker;’ Doom’s official Twitter later issued a humorous one-word response to his dig.
