Rosamund Pike appeared on a recent episode of the “How to Fail with Elizabeth Day” podcast and opened up about the “catastrophe” of staring in 2005’s “Doom” video game adaptation. The sci-fi action movie, directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, was headlined by Dwayne Johnson and Karl Urban. Pike was still an up-and-comer, having recently broken out as a villain in the James Bond movie “Die Another Day.”
“When I was making ‘Pride & Prejudice’ and I was having great fun in my cornfields in my bonnet, I get a call to be in an action franchise,” Pike said (via The Independent). “They were making a cinema version, a narrative version of the video game ‘Doom.’ And I think in my bonnet, in my field of hay bales, ‘Yeah, I can do anything. I can jump on this hay bale in my crinoline, so I can certainly go and kill some zombies on Mars.’”
“So suddenly I’m in this film with the Rock, and I realize how utterly ill-equipped I am to be an action star,” she continued. “[There were] macho guys. There were weights on the set. Every time a gun was brought out, it was kind of like a holy relic for the ‘Doom’ fans. I was just out of my comfort zone, out of my league, out of my depth.”
“Doom” centred on a group of marines on Mars as they fight back against demon-like creatures. Johnson’s acting career was also on the rise after roles in “The Scorpion King” and “Walking Tall,” but he was nowhere near the box office draw he is now. Johnson replaced Ray Winstone on the movie. “Doom” flopped was just under $60 million worldwide. Reviews were even worse. The film’s Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 18%, although Variety wrote in its review that the movie “is really not all that bad.”
“It was an absolute bomb. I mean, I probably could have ended my career,” Pike said. “It was just probably one of the worst films ever made. I mean, it was a catastrophe. I don’t read the reviews, but you get the sense like you’re lucky to have survived that one.”
Listen to Pike’s full interview on the “How to Fail with Elizabeth Day” podcast here.
From Variety US
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