Kit Harington on Pompeii. Image courtesy of Entertainment Weekly.
No one would fault you for replaying the trailer 100 times just so you could look at Kit Harington or Emily Browning but there is more to the story than staring at those two. Pompeii is a lead role for Harington which has the potential of launching his film career well beyond Game Of Thrones.
Other big named stars headline the film including Carrie-Anne Moss, Kiefer Sutherland and Sasha Roiz. The film which is produced by Paul W.S. Anderson is a different kind of film for Anderson. Anderson directed one of my favorite Science Fiction Horror films Event Horizon in the late 90s. Looking at his past producing credits he has spent a lot of time on the Resident Evil franchise and other darker SciFi properties. Pompeii appears to be the first factual-fiction based plot that he has done. Factual in that Pompeii did explode and was to date the worst volcanic disaster in history, fiction for everything else. The teaser may not be enough to judge the film yet, but one thing is for sure, it won’t like any visuals. Pompeii has a history that must be brought to life on-screen.
The film is set for release on 21 February 2014.
It’s late summer in 79 A.D. and the city of Pompeii glitters at the foot of the mighty Mt. Vesuvius. MILO, the slave of a shipping tycoon, dreams of the day he will buy his freedom and marry his master’s daughter, COLUMBA. What he doesn’t know is that Columba’s debt-ridden father has promised Columba to a despicable Roman Senator to pay off an overdue loan.
Milo does know that his friend, the Gladiator NIGELLUS, is being forced to compete the next day in a seemingly unwinnable battle in the Coliseum. As Milo tries to find a way to save his friend, he learns that Columba has been promised to another man and that he himself has been sold to a new master. Just as it seems things can’t get any worse, Mt. Vesuvius suddenly explodes with the power of 40 nuclear bombs, sending a torrent of 1,000-degree ash and smoke into the city. Lava flows down the mountainside, killing thousands. As Pompeii crumbles, Nigellus is imprisoned inside the Coliseum, Columba is locked inside her family’s villa, and Milo is trapped aboard a ship bound for Naples.
As the people of Pompeii flee the obliterated city, Milo is determined to return to it to save his friend and his beloved Columba. With fire and ash destroying the only world he’s ever known, an ordinary man is tested to his breaking point in this heart-pounding tale of extraordinary heroism.
