Rosamund Pike has recalled her experience working on the 2005 Doom movie, which she described as “an absolute bomb” that could have ended her career.
Pike, who played Bond girl Miranda Frost in 2002’s Die Another Day before starring alongside Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Karl Urban in the ill-fated video game adaptation, said she was “lucky to have survived” its disastrous release.
Doom follows Karl Urban’s John Grimm, a marine who is nicknamed “Reaper” by the other members of his squad. In charge is “Sarge,” played by Dwayne Johnson. As with id Software’s shooter series, the marines are stationed at a Martian research facility when everything goes to hell. Among the scientists working there is John’s estranged sister, Samantha (Rosamund Pike).
Doom often ranks alongside 1993’s Super Mario Bros. and 1994’s Street Fighter in worst video game movies ever lists. And speaking with Elizabeth Day on the How to Fail podcast, Pike listed Doom as one of her failures.
“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. “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.’”
“Originally it was with Ray Winstone, that project. And then the whole thing was reimagined, and he was the leader of this bunch of marines going out to this facility in Mars. And I was a scientist out there. And then, for whatever reason Ray Winstone didn’t end up doing it, and he was replaced by Dwayne Johnson, The Rock.
