Comic-Con Panel: Doom

By Maura Reilly Jul 24, 2005, 7:50 GMT

Actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Actor Karl Urban, CEO Id Software Todd Hollenshead, Producers Lorenzo DiBoneventure and John Wells talk about the movie version of Doom.

Mod: The game [Doom] has always been perfect for a movie setting.  Why do you think it took so long to bring it to the big screen?

Todd: Well it has been a long process. I think that we’ve been through certain trials and tribulations.  One thing is, when I started with the company Doom was the franchise we had left behind for Quake at that point in time. So there as a little bit of momentum that was lost from a Hollywood prospective on what was the relevant title. We came back and started working on Doom 3 in 2000. It had such a great go in 2002 I think that it started up the momentum again. It also sort of took bringing all the right parts together to bring the movie to the big screen.  When we started back, even before I was in it, we never really had the right team in place.  I think working with CAA from the Agency side, John and Lorenzo from the production company, and those guys going out and getting a writer who I think was a big fan of the game and of the genre in general to write a script that would do the game justice was a process took some time.

Mod: What were your concerns with game to movie adaptation?

Todd: There’s a big difference in the media because from interactive to passive you do have change the thing to keep it feeling of excitement similar between the two.  When we started going through the process, for example looking at the scripts, we weren’t looking at something necessarily to be exactly the type of story we had.  Especially the original Doom because basically just sort of an outline written at the start of a manual to give you a reason to be there and a reason to do what you’re doing as you’re blasting demons away.  You know that you’re the good guy and these are all coming from hell and give you a bit of the set. We wanted the movie to have something that was new, that would be interesting, exciting to fans, that maybe we had a bit of the unexpected in there as well, but still be something that was true to the feel of playing the video game is. I think that working with the team that we have is that we are going to be able to do that.

Mod: What was the reaction when you showed the trailer at your office?

Todd: The teaser just got in the office I guess it was on Thursday (July 14) or Wednesday (July 13) of this week.  So a lot of the guys in the really office hadn’t seen any of the visuals from what people were working on with the movie at all.  So this was a case of true first impressions.  Most of the team hadn’t had an opportunity to read the script.  They didn’t know what to expect.  We hung around the plasma monitor in one of the conference rooms with everybody in the company there, you almost sort of feel the electricity build in the air.  At the end of the teaser, which I guess is 90 seconds long, something like that, there was simultaneous applause.  It felt good for me and I think all the guys were pumped to see the movie in October.

Mod: Karl, could you tell us a little bit about your personal history with the game?  Why you found the project attractive?

Karl: I was a fan of the game. I’d played it quite a few times with some friends of mine back in New Zealand.  And then quite ironically enough, when I was making Chronicles of Riddick with Vin [Diesel] he had this place with this massive 10 foot projector screen and we would play the game.  When my agent called me up and said: “They’re building this UAC facility in Prague and I want you to be the guy.” I was like… It was a no-brainer for me.  I was very, very, very, very interested to be a part of it.  When I read the script, saw that it was a very solid script with fantastic characters, three dimensional characters, all with great arcs and journeys,  most importantly for me to see that the script a faithful rendition of the game.  It’s unapologetic; it’s dark as hell it’s gory, I think a really faithful rendition of the game.

Mod: We were talking earlier and it sounds like the experience of making the movie was like a kid’s paradise: running around and holding guns and blowing stuff up.  Could you talk a little bit about that?

Karl: Oh yeah, I had a lot of fun making this.  They went to a lot of trouble to accurately recreate the sets from the game. They built these corridors and labs.  Even the graphics on the computer screens were exactly the same as the game.  We had a lot of fun rampaging through this set.  It was a scary, dark set for four months.  We were really privileged, we got to train a guy call Tom McAdams who was ex-Army with 25 years of experience.  It was his job to teach us how to play the game for real.  He taught us about weapons, taught us how to communicate with hand signals, weapon safety, and firing maneuvers.  It was a real eye-opener.  He told us a lot of tales about his experience to try and give us some depth of knowledge.  Of course all those tales are highly unrepeatable.  I think we were fortunate in the fact that the producers assembled a really top notch cast for this film, a really fantastic bunch of guys and we really kind of bonded and formed a strong team.

Mod: Rock, early on in the production there was some confusion about the role you were going to play in the movie.  Can you talk a little bit about that?

The Rock: Originally the confusion came in: I read the script and when once I signed on to do it and everybody had assumed at that point that I was playing the character “John.” When I first read the script for John, I read it and after I read it I thought: “John is a great character, of course, he’s the hero of the movie.” But for some reason I was drawn more to “Sarge.” I thought Sarge, more to me was more interesting, and had a darker side with a great twist at the end.  When you’re forced in the position where you’re the commanding officer of clearly an elite group of Marines [it’s] how you deal with the problems you’re facing and staying within the confines of the story of trying to take care of the problem on Mars basically and dealing with all these monsters, and my guys are dying and how I’m dealing with that.  And not only that but when I realized I could actually shoot the BFG… Can I say what that is?  Bio Force Gun. [editor: of course] In reading it I really fell in love it Sarge.  I had such a great time making the movie as we all did.

Mod: It seems the physicality of the roles you’ve played in your career have played a role.  How did you prepare…

The Rock: Not withstanding my gay character in Be Cool.

Mod: (laughs) It probably helped a little.  How did you go about doing special preparation for this role?

The Rock: We had a great fight Coordinator in Dion Lam who did a great job coordinating the fight and putting it together.  In terms in preparing, like Karl had said earlier, we had a guy named Tom McAdams who had been in the SAS for a number of years who basically ran a boot camp for a couple of weeks.  It was that type of prep that we would do in terms of handling the gun and certain signals, and basically if we were in warfare how would it be and how to react and become true marines.

Mod: Are you a gun enthusiast in general?

The Rock: Sure I’ve got a couple guns hanging off my shoulders I’ll show you in a little while. (Laughs) My publicist is going crazy because I said I won’t be cheesy this morning.  But there was a lot of cheese on that pizza.  And to answer your question, I’m not necessarily a gun enthusiast but it was great firing the BFG.  I mean that thing was huge.  The gun that is.  And the humor goes straight to the toilet.

Mod: Bet that publicist is loving you now.

Mod: So how different is to act out a role against something where there is definitely going to be CGI, there are going to be monsters that are very scary in the ultimate product, but probably not as scary on set? How do you go about handling that?

The Rock: As an actor, that is just what you do: you act scared.  But the truth of the matter is, and I have to make this very, very clear because I think it’s really important to all the Doom game fans and video game fans because as a gamer myself for years and years and years it was important that the monsters were not CGI monsters. I am happy and very, very proud to say that we went to Stan Winston Studios who created these monsters. (applause) I don’t have to sell Stan Winston Studios to you guys.  With a couple video game movies in the past, without naming names I wasn’t too crazy about the CGI monsters because there’s no weight to them.  And they look kinda fluffy and light regardless to how scary they may look.  So these monsters here are made from the real-deal guys. They have these guys that would put on the outfits for hours and hours. They look incredible, six, like seven, eight feet tall, I think one may be hitting nine.  Just unbelievable and awesome, gravity and weight and they really kick a lot of ass in the movie, I promise you.

Mod: What’s your personal experience plying Doom games?  Do you play them as well?

The Rock:  I played the first one yeah. It’s so funny, the first one came out in ’93, I remember playing it (and I’ll share this with you), I played for a little while and I was like: “Damn I think I feel sick!  I think there’s something wrong.” I didn’t know at that time I wasn’t used to the first person shooter, [to Todd] which you guys were the trailblazers for that, you created that.  I played that, of course Doom 2 and Doom 3.  They sent me Doom 3.  I loved it and played it before I went out. It’s great, it’s great.  You guys are going to be really happy and very satisfied when you see the movie.  I can especially say that now having played the game.<!--page-->

Mod: Speaking to that, how close to the spirit of the game do you think the finished product actually came?

Todd: There are parts that are straight out of the game itself.  I mean as Karl was saying, when I went over to visit the set in Prague with Lead Designer of the game Tim Willits the first thing we noticed, we were literally taken aback because, we’d been working with this game for four years (as everybody knows) to complete Doom 3, so we’d be working with it a while and to sort of step out of the game universe in virtual space and actually onto the set to where everything even down to the signs besides the doors and the graphics on the computer monitors that are in the movie are right down to detail from the game.  The artists at ID we spent all that time working on creating the ID characters and Barren and Hell 9 characters and even the Pinky demon characters and other demons of the game. To see those guys brought to real life, I think I probably could even have acted scared in front of Barren.  We got to visit him in person, out of the suit and in the suit.  The guy is…Brian (Steele) is what 6’8”? And he’s on lifts too.  When you play the game and then go see the movie you’ll see direct connections between the two.  I think from an overall feel stand-point the intensity, the atmosphere, and really the terror aspect of the game are really what you guys focused on and I thought executed so well in the film.

The Rock: I think that’s a good point that Todd has just said. He said a word that was interesting and very, very true, about the intensity.  The intensity of the game certainly carries over into the movie. You guys will see the first three, four minutes we set it up and by minute 5 we’re gone.  And we go.  The intensity’s there and you’re on this non-stop train ride to hell.

Karl: I think one the cool things about the movie that a lot of the gamers will appreciate:  in the movie version you can use your torch and your weapon at the same time.  It helps.

Mod: So guys you got it to the big screen!  It’s here! So the main question is why did you want to make this film?

Lorenzo: Honestly as a gamer I’ve been pretty disappointed with most of the films I’ve seen based on games. One of the things we did right from the beginning was to say we’re not going to do a PG-13 version of this picture. There was no way to take Doom and not do an R-rated picture.  And that was a bit of the battle getting it going.  We spent a lot of time convincing other people that that was what we should really do.

John: Universal was fantastic.  They were really the only studio to say to us: “Don’t let us dilute this thing.  Let us go.  You guys just go for it and I think you’re going to enjoy that part.”

Mod:  how did you originally envision it? When you were planning it out, how did you think about the look and feel of the movie?

Lorenzo:  It’s a combination of things I think.  The game had really established the look and the feel of it.  But the really challenge was to try and come up with a story that non-gamers would appreciate as much.  That’s the part where you have to add elements that don’t exist in the game, some story elements to carry you through a three-act structure.  We had to introduce a few new characters to give it a shape for a movie.  I think that was the first thing we all did.  After that we kept going to ID, going: “Can we try this?” and they’d go: “Sure!” And we’d go: “Well can we try this?” and they’d go: “Sure!” We had great partners and it was a very easy process as a result.  I think that’s why we got to actually make the movie.

Mod: How would you say this fits into the mythology of the Doom Universe?

John: We worked hard to make sure that it would fit in.  One of the things that we did that I think was smart was from the beginning Lorenzo knew a young writer who hadn’t done a lot of things before, David Callaham.  He came in and he was a gamer and very protective of the game itself.  So a lot of the conversations that we had were [about] what can we do to augment to get it to lengthen and have a story to follow but at the same time be completely true to what was in the game?  That was a lot of conversations.  I’d say we did about 30 drafts before we got the right one.  So it was a very conscious decision about what would work well and as Tony said a real concern about the CGI and how it gets used.  I think there is a general sense, on our part, that a lot of films are relying too much on CGI and not really giving the visceral quality of what you get from some terrific creature creations that someone like Stan Winston can do.

Fan Question #1: For the Rock, what your attraction to this project was, outside of your interest in the games?  How you got involved with it, and what that process was like?

The Rock: I’m a big fan of the game, and when I read the script, obviously you always set out to make a really good movie.  And hitting on what John had said, my first question was: “Is it going to be rated PG-13 or rated R?” When word got back that it was definitely going to be rated R, I spoke with Scott Stuber who was the executive at the time over at Universal I said: “This movie should be everything the game is which is unapologetic and ground breaking.” And he said: “It will be.”  Of course working with these producers has been fantastic, the writing is good.  Again, when I read it, I fell in love with the character of Sarge and everything that he had to go through.  It was a great script.  I saw the movie last week and I’m happy to tell you, it’s a great movie and it kicks ass.

Fan Question #2: This question is for the Rock: first of all I’m in the United States Navy and I’ve been in for 5 years.  Part of my job is to guide and shoot the harpoon missiles.  Little as I am [she, yes she, is a petite woman, probably no more than 5’2”] I’ve been through intensive training myself.  What are your favorite weapons to use and why?

The Rock: That’s a good question, because it could go X-Rated…  Bring it out of the toilet.  Truth of the matter is, I haven’t really had much training in terms of weaponry.  While we were training, [for Doom] we primarily used AK-47s.  I was able on “Walking Tall” to go back off the set and shoot this double barrel shotgun a whole bunch of times which was great. (Applause) Oh you’re a fan of the double-barrel?  That’s good.  And really that’s it.  I certainly leave that to the pros, such as yourself.  I admire you by the way.  Five years, that’s great.

Fan Question #3: My question is for Karl.  Can you speak to the experience of playing a character that drives from new media versus your other character roles that come from more traditional forms of generated scripts?

Karl: There was no difference.  Having worked on “Lord of the Rings”, I was used to working on a project where there was an intense pressure and intense determination to get it right.  And I was certainly very encouraged by the fact that I was working with Lorenzo and John.  Everybody was determined take this project, give it wings and make it fly.  They assembled a really fantastic team, a great cast.  All the guys were really solid to work with.  It was a fantastic experience to make.  As you can see, you’re not going to be disappointed.

Fan Question #4: Do you see this as a trend as far as creating movies out of video games?  And if so, what would you see as the next video games in the genre to be made into movies?

John: There have been a number of them that have been done already.  I think our hope for this picture is that we actually do a little bit better than them.  I hope you don’t think we us arrogant for saying so.  But I think that a lot of those films haven’t been particularly true to the origins of the game.  There are a lot of great games out there that I think that people will be interested in seeing.  I’m hoping that we’ve set the bar a little high and that the people who want to try coming after us are truer to the spirit of the original game and the way in which it was created.  I think that’s one of the reasons ID stuck by us for so long.  You guys saw that we were serious about doing that and not watering down what was great about the game in the first place.  There are some great games out there.  A lot of people talk about doing Halo.  We’ll just have to see what happens.<!--page-->

Fan Question #5: What special steps have you taken to make sure that this lives up to its fan base, creates new fans, and prevent it from being a disappointment like so many other video game based movies, like “Street Fighter”?

John: We were trying so hard not to name and names.

Lorenzo: I’ll jump in.  You know, it was about a lot of hard work really.  I think that everybody took on the same motivation. John mentioned that ID stuck by us for a long time.  We looked to ID to be our guide to make sure that we were doing what the fans would want us to do. We felt that we could also bring to the table a movie audience, who had not been grounded in the game but could also experience it separately just as a movie.  A lot of the time spent, whether it was The Rock or Karl crafting their roles, or in writing, or producing, in every aspect of it we spent time figuring out: “Ok, now we’ve got out solid base, we understand where the gamers are going to lay or not on these issues, how do we now expand it to the movie audience?”  It was just about being really careful about every detail on every performance piece.

Todd: From our standpoint too, we’re a company that makes video games and we don’t really want to be moviemakers.  We tried to have our input be helpful and assist in making the movie without trying to control the process which is something we don’t know a whole lot about.  John Carmack, is in my opinion, the world’s greatest programmer but I wouldn’t want him directing my film, if that’s what it came down to.  That’s not his skill-set.  What we were able to, by input to help John and Lorenzo early on with the script, with Stan Winston Studios with the effects, with the creatures.  I felt our input was welcome and I know it made a difference in ultimately what the film was about, without is getting our ego in the way and feeling that we had these people who were King of the whole process.

The Rock: I agree with everything that everyone just said.

Fan Question #6: I wanted to ask about the shooting location.  For the Production staff, [why] the selection of Prague as the shooting location and for the actors the difficulties and joys of working there for such an extended amount of time?

The Rock: Prague is a beautiful city for those of you who haven’t gone….and who have gone.  Prague is a beautiful city. I enjoyed it. The people were great.  Architecturally it’s beautiful.  Let me tell you, much like the game, this was really intense to shoot. 12, 14 hour days every day, 6 day work weeks.  We never saw sunlight. We’d get up 5am, there’s no sun and we’d go to the sound stage where it’s very dark. Obviously you saw in the trailer and the first-person shooter [scene] that was our life for 3 to 4 months.  So it was an intense shoot, a lot of death, daily to deal with.  But Prague was great. I will say, having spent 3, 4 months in Prague, there is nothing like the United States.  I’ll never forgive Universal for sending me to Prague.

Fan Question #7: This question is for Todd, I was wondering if the same people who designed and created the demons for the game, are they the same ones creating the demons for the movie.

Todd: yes and no, actually.  Jon Farhat and John Rosengrant who are the team that basically manage all the effects, the CG and everything that’s in the movie, the process that they started was looking at some sequences that we sent them from the video game.  They said: “Hey these characters are great and what we really just need to do is tweak them up for the medium in which they are going to be displayed.” So we literally took the high poly and the matte models from the game for the Hell 9 demon, the Pinky Demon, and some of the other guys and sent them over.  Then of course it’s a selection process in terms of what characters they wanted to highlight for the movie because you can’t do as many obviously for the movie as you can in the game itself.  So the genesis and ultimate incarnation of the demons from Doom 3 is what you see when you watch the film.  Kenneth Scott [Lead Artist at ID] is one of the most particular and hard to please guys that I’ve ever met in my entire life, and I say that with all the love in the world, when he said “this is awesome!” first at the selection of Stan Winston studios to do the effects and then the ultimate end product, if it can pass that guy’s mustard then everybody else has just got to be pleased as punch with it.

The Rock: If it passes that guy’s mustard? I’ve never heard that.

Fan Question #8:  Rock, we really miss you at the WWE. My question is for the other guys.  There are so many video games that come out with great story lines.  I was wondering if you would ever consider using the guys that write the stories for the video games to write the script for the movies rather that being consultants?

John:  It’s sort if a different medium.  I don’t think anyone would think that would be out of the question to do that.  It’s just a question as to whether they’ve ever written a screenplay before. It is a learning process. So it would be difficult to hire somebody who’s never written a screenplay before.  But would I imagine that that’s what’s going to happen in the future.

Fan Question #9 [a young girl, 8 or 9 years old]: Hi my question is for Karl Urban.

Karl: Hi Sweetie, how are you doing? What’s your name?

Fan: Jade.

Karl: How are you?

Jade: Good. I was wondering how making this movie is different from “Lord of the Rings”?

Karl: Well in “Lord of the Rings” I kind of sound like this: “What business does an Elf, a Man, and a Dwarf…” (applause) Don’t get me going.  I could go on all day. Oh thank you, thank you.  The main difference is really this film obviously is a different genre, I talk differently, and I use an American accent in this film.  Thank you Jade.

Fan Question #10: This is the last question…

The Rock: No pressure.

Fan: This is to the entire panel, I was wondering in what direction you were taking Doom with.  Is it supposed to be serious and dramatic or a really good shoot-up action?

Karl: It’s really a love story.

Fan: Between you and the Rock?

Mod: That’s where “Be Cool” comes in.

The Rock: Now Karl knows why they call me “The Rock.” It was important to make a movie that was unapologetic and make sure that we stayed true to the game, #1, make sure the intensity was there.  Is there action?  Yeah, you bet your ass there’s action.  There’s great action in it.  From the chain gun, to the BFG, to all the guns, it’s fantastic.  There is action, shoot ‘em up.  Is it intense? Yes. Is there drama in it?  Yes, absolutely, drama does unfold.

Fan: Also Rock, are you going to be in “Johnny Bravo” or “Conan”?

The Rock: Not “Conan”, but they are writing “Johnny Bravo” now, so I’m excited about that.