Before HBO’s The Last of Us broke the video game adaptation curse, such projects failed regularly at the box office. One such dud was the Universal Studios-produced Doom (2005) starring Dwayne Johnson and Rosamund Pike. The adaptation of the first-person shooter game cost $70 million, but it failed to gross even $60 million at the box office.
Critics and fans hated everything from the plot to the set design as well as the acting of the stars in the film. The Rock and Pike also reportedly didn’t have a great time filming it. The two Hollywood stars have slammed the film in various ways and Pike straight-up said that she was embarrassed by her ignorance of the game the film was based on.
Rosamund Pike Talks About Her Box Office Disaster Doom
During an interview with Collider, Rosamund Pike talked about her experience filming Doom. She stated that she had no idea what the original video game was. The actress also expressed that if she had known, she would have done more research into it. Pike said:
“I wasn’t a gamer, I didn’t understand. If I knew what I knew now, I would have dived right into all of that and got fully immersed in it like I do now. And I just didn’t understand. I feel embarrassed, really. I feel embarrassed that I was sort of ignorant of what it meant and I didn’t know how to go about finding out.”
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Pike elaborated that the internet back then didn’t exist in the form it does now. So there wasn’t much of a way for fans to speak up about their views on the Doom adaptation. But the actress stated that she is approaching things differently for her The Wheel of Time series. Pike said that this time she has embraced the fan culture and even gone to chat rooms to understand what they love or dislike about the series and the books.
She just wishes she could have done that for Doom as well. As per Pike, “I just wish I had known to do that for Doom. So it’s a source of kind of regret for me that — I just didn’t know enough about the business to be perfectly honest.” Her co-star Dwayne Johnson also doesn’t have too fond memories of the film.
Dwayne Johnson Trashes Doom Filming Schedule
During a 2005 interview with Movieweb, Dwayne Johnson stated that he was a fan of the Doom game and also loved the script of the film even though he thought that what Universal Studios was trying to make was really ambitious. However, The Rock didn’t have a great time filming the project. He termed the shoot as intense and lamented the fact that he never saw sunlight. As per Johnson:
“It was an intense shoot to be very honest with you. We were away, I was away from home. We’re in Prague for four months on a sound stage, never saw the sun. Woke up at four, five o’clock in the morning, no sun; get back at eight o’clock, come out of the sound stage, no sun. So I never saw the sun… where every day we’re being chased, we’re chasing, there’s death, there’s my men getting their heads ripped off, death and dying and all that, so it was an intense shoot.”
However, back then, he didn’t openly disparage the film. He did that in 2018 on Twitter when he tweeted out in support of Rampage’s box office, stating, “It seems we may have finally broken the dreaded video game curse. And remember, I starred in the stinker ‘Doom’ so I have lived thy curse.”
While the Rampage film didn’t become a part of the pop culture zeitgeist, it did earn more than $430 million on a $120- $150 million budget. Thus, Cementing Johnson as a bankable star. As for Rosamund Pike, she created an envy-inspiring filmography for herself, complete with an Oscar win. Both the stars have moved on to other projects long ago.
Doom is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
