Hollywood Comes Knockin'

It took some time for Doom to reach the silver screen, but it finally made it this year. Take a look over at Part 1, Behind the Making of Doom The Movie, first. In this article, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead spoke to TwitchGuru about the whole experience, and where video game movies could be headed from here.

THG: When did Hollywood first contact id about making Doom into a movie?

Todd Hollenshead: Well the rights for the movie option were licensed for the very first time back in '94-'95. Following the success of Doom 2, there was Hollywood interest in making a movie out of Doom 2, but there were a number of circumstances that frustrated the process. There was Columbine, which was an issue; there was an issue of us not having the right people engaged in the process from a producer standpoint. There were some initial scripts that weren't very good, and I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that when you look at Doom and Doom 2, especially from a Hollywood viewpoint, and try to figure out what the movie's going to be from these games, it's a much larger leap than looking at a game like Doom 3 and thinking about what the movie could be based on that game.

THG: Were there ever any bidding wars for the rights?

Todd Hollenshead: Universal was the original option holder, then Sony / Columbia / Tri-Star had the rights for a while. Those are what I'd call quote-unquote "the old deals." Then, after we showed Doom 3 for the first time, we basically sat down with our agents at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), a number of Hollywood executives came out, and we screened the presentation to see if they were interested. That's when we dictated what the current terms of the deal were. Ultimately, Universal stepped into those exact shoes. There certainly was some bidding, and there was some back and forth, but we broke some brand new ground for a game developer/publisher in movie deals. As far as I know, Doom was the first movie deal where the developer and the rights holder had gross point royalties in the movie deal itself. There were some on the Tomb Raider films, but that was because the producer on it gave the rights holder part of his deal.